Every sick person deserves compassion and necessary care and treatment. This does not mean, however, that you cannot say an open word as to the causes for this sickness.

Men who have sex with men (MSM) are accountable for a high percentage of persons with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). In Germany, you can check the numbers for yourself here: www.rki.de. Included are not even follow-up diseases like drug addictions, mental problems, physical diseases and so on that result from a high-risk lifestyle only all too common among some of the men with same-sex attractions ("homosexuals"). Obviously, safer-sex campaigns don't work as they should (aside the fact that they do not protect against all STDs, they also start at the end of the chain. Teaching the true meaning of love, marriage and sex might do a far better job). Society has to pay the high costs of the health treatments of those persons then. The same society that is usually blamed for as being "homophobic". However, it is not this society whom you can blame for when you become sick because of irresponsible sexual behavior. It is no other than yourself.

Bringing this up is politically not correct. I will even top it with this: Whoever lives in a monogamous, heterosexual, lifelong Christian marriage will not become HIV or any of the other health problems mentioned above. Some will not like that, but it definitely needs to be said.

We help financing gay public events and the gay movement in general, when the outcome is more than shocking - and oftentimes irresponsible.

"It may be, however, that the very variety of interpretations of to'evah points to a far more fundamental meaning, namely, that an act characterized as an "abomination" is prima facie disgusting and cannot be further defined or explained. Certain acts are considered to'evah by the Torah, and there the matter rests. It is, as it were, a visceral reaction, an intuitive disqualification of the act, and we run the risk of distorting the Biblical judgment if we rationalize it. To'evah constitutes a category of objectionableness sui generis: it is a primary phenomenon. (This lends additional force to Rabbi David Z. Hoffmann's contention that to'evah is used by the Torah to indicate the repulsiveness of a proscribed act, no matter how much it may be in vogue among advanced and sophisticated cultures: see his Sefer Va-yikra, II, p. 54.)."

(Dr. Normann Lamm, Judaism and the Modern Attitude to Homosexuality, taken from http://www.catholicsforisrael.com/articles/torah-and-gospel/247-judaism-and-the-modern-attitude-to-homosexuality)

"The introduction of retroviral drugs has made AIDS a chronic rather than a deadly disease so that young MSM maintain the argument that anal sex is their right and due but that it remains without real consequences. This tiny part of the population contributes 63 percent of the new HIV cases in the United States.

But it is not just rampant disease that defines the MSM syndemic. There are also psychological disorders and suicidal ideation. O’Leary reports that “well designed studies with large samples done in the US, New Zealand, UK, and the Netherlands have found that MSM were far more likely to have a history of psychological disorders, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse problems (Fergusson, Horwood, and Beautrais 1999; Herrell et al. 1999; Cochran Mays, and Sullivan 2003; Gilman et al. 2001; Sandfort et al. 2001, 2006; Warner et al. 2004).”"

I worked for eight years in the writing center of a public high school on the North Shore of Chicago and was a member of the English Department. I learned from this experience what ideas and resources students were exposed to and what ideas and resources they were never exposed to. I learned that there was absolute censorship of conservative resources on the topic of homosexuality.

I learned that the commitments of many public educators to diversity and tolerance were empty verbiage. They do not honor or cultivate intellectual diversity, and they are intolerant of those who express conservative views on the nature of homosexuality and the morality of homosexual practice.

They engage in censorship, finding myriad rationalizations for including resources that espouse “progressive” views of homosexuality. For academic ideologues, that's the beauty of teaching English: they can always find ways to rationalize the teaching of controversial texts that undermine traditional values. They simply assert that these texts cultivate higher order thinking skills, or critical thinking skills, or research skills or the teaching of literary terms or that they connect thematically to other texts being taught.

Astonishingly, they can’t seem to find any pedagogical reason for having students study even a single essay from a conservative scholar.

Their pedagogical rationalizations are subterfuges to conceal the true goal in teaching controversial texts which is societal transformation.

As I began to read and think more deeply on the cultural debate surrounding the issue of homosexuality, I learned that the ideas that public educators promote are assumptions for which they have no evidence or justification. They impose their unproven, non-factual beliefs through curricula and their own classroom comments; and they impose them on other people’s children using public resources.

Conservatives need to understand the fallacious, unproven nature of their assumptions and challenge them on them, rather than always being on the defensive. For example, we never ask “progressives” to provide reasons for their claim that homosexuality is by nature like race, which is the assumption upon which virtually their entire house of cards is built.

There is no greater threat to First Amendment speech and religious liberties, to the ethical legitimacy of public education, or to parental rights than that posed by the homosexuality- affirming movement. Our continued fearful silence makes us complicit in these terrible losses.

I had a colleague tell me that he was trying to find a way to address the problem of homosexual-advocacy that was not divisive. I told him that that was not possible. No matter how completely you express your views and no matter how graciously you express them, if you say that you believe homosexual practice is immoral, you will be hated. We need to understand that unity and peace must never trump truth.

In this paper, I will discuss a number of the specious cultural arguments used to normalize homosexuality and silence dissent, pointing out their intellectual flaws in the hope that such a discussion will help prevent people from being either confused or deceived by these arguments and so that people will feel better equipped to engage in this critical public debate.

What is homosexuality?

I would argue that there are very broadly two categories of conditions:

First, there are conditions that have no behavioral implications that can be assessed morally. In other words, these conditions are morally neutral, like skin color or biological sex. Having brown skin has no behavioral and, therefore, no moral, implications.

And then there is the second category of conditions, which includes conditions that are centrally defined by desire or feelings and volitional behaviors. This would include polyamory (which is the romantic and sexual attraction to and involvement with multiple people at the same time), promiscuity, consensual incest, aggression, and homosexuality. The initial impulses or desires may be shaped by biological factors, but the behaviors associated with these conditions are volitional and legitimate objects of moral assessment.

Progressives are plucking homosexuality out of category 2 and treating it like conditions from category 1 without any justification for doing so and apparently hoping no one will notice or challenge them.

But homosexuality is not analogous to race. Race or skin color is 100% heritable; completely immutable; and has no behavioral manifestations that are legitimate to assess morally.

Even if biological factors influenced attraction would not mean that homosexual acts are moral. Biology tells us precisely nothing about morality.

I do not believe that people choose to experience same-sex attraction. I believe they choose how to respond to those unchosen and in many cases unwanted attractions. Those who experience same-sex attraction are no different from any other person who experiences unwanted, powerful, persistent impulses, desires, and attractions. Our task as moral beings is to determine which of our myriad desires are morally legitimate to act upon.

From this attempt to equate homosexuality to race emerges the claim that disapproval of homosexuality is equivalent to racism, or to hatred of persons.

The first mistake in this argument is that homosexuality is not analogous to race, and therefore disapproval of homosexuality is not analogous or equivalent to racism. Instead, disapproval of homosexuality is equivalent to disapproval of other conditions that are centrally defined by volitional acts, like polyamory.

Second, homosexualists (which are homosexuals and those who support their beliefs and goals) emphatically assert that disapproval of homosexual acts constitutes hatred of persons. However, they don’t apply that principle consistently. They don’t argue that disapproval of other volitional behaviors constitutes hatred of persons.

People make moral claims about behavior all the time and are rarely accused of hating people. People say polyamory is immoral, polygamy is immoral, promiscuity is immoral, and gossiping is immoral, and yet no one is ever accused of hating polyamorists, polygamists, promiscuous people, or gossips. And when have you ever heard people who disapprove of polyamory referred to as polyphobes?

In reality, the only thing racism has in common with disapproval of homosexuality is that homosexualists hate both.

Sometimes this argument is tweaked a bit, and homosexualists will say that the expression of the view that homosexual acts are immoral is hurtful.

What they’re suggesting is that the moral legitimacy of speech is determined by the subjective response of hearer. It suggests that if someone is made uncomfortable by hearing a moral claim, it is unethical to make it. This idea, applied consistently, would preclude the expression of any moral claims because someone within earshot is likely to engage in the behavior that we are critiquing. We couldn’t say promiscuity or gossip is immoral because someone listening might be promiscuous or a gossip, and would feel bad. Imagine a culture in which no one could ever make a moral claim publicly.

The moral legitimacy of speech is determined by its content (e.g. is it believed to be true or is it a deliberate lie) and the manner in which it is delivered (e.g. are the words and tone civil). For example, saying “God hates fags,” like Rev. Fred Phelps does is unethical speech, whereas saying that homosexual acts are immoral is perfectly legitimate speech. The fact that homosexuals will hate both statements does not mean both statements are unethical.

We should always remain aware that there is a strategic goal behind accusing people of being haters: the goal is to shame or humiliate them into silence. Homosexualists seek to use fear to compel conservatives into self-censorship. And they’re succeeding.

One of the central stratagems of the homosexuality affirming movement is to manipulate rhetoric, and one set of related terms that are manipulated in the service of normalizing homosexuality includes the terms prejudice, bias, bigotry, and discrimination:

“Prejudice” refers to “an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.” As such, opinions formed, even negative opinions, after careful consideration do not represent prejudice.

“Bias” according to the American Heritage Dictionary means “A preference or inclination, esp. one that inhibits impartial judgment; prejudice.” In its usage note it further explains that “Bias has generally been defined as ‘uninformed or unintentional inclination,’” which is the meaning of prejudice. This definition reveals that informed, intentional, thoughtfully constructed opinions do not constitute bias.

A “bigot” according to the Merriam Webster definition refers to a person who is “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group with hatred and intolerance.”

Clearly, there is a distinction between bigotry and moral views. Bigotry cannot simply refer to holding opinions or being in possession of moral precepts, for if it did, everyone but sociopaths would have to be considered bigots because everyone but sociopaths holds certain behaviors as moral and others as immoral.

In addition, the word “obstinately” in the definition of “bigot” warrants some discussion. First, “obstinate,” according to The American Heritage Dictionary, connotes “unreasonable rigidity.” I would argue that conservative views on homosexuality are completely reasonable, and that conversely, liberal views are woefully unreasonable. In order to determine whether a tenaciously held conviction reflects obstinacy requires an evaluation of the content of the belief and the justifications for that belief. For example, very few would characterize the act of consistently and enduringly, holding the belief that infantilism, pedophilia, or polyamory is wrong to be a manifestation of obstinacy or bigotry.

With regard to discrimination, an important distinction must be made between appropriate or ethical discrimination and unethical discrimination. Discrimination can refer to making judgments or discriminating between right and wrong in which case it is a good, healthy, and essential personal and civic process.

Illegitimate discrimination, on the other hand, refers to unfavorable treatment of others based on ignorance. Conflating or deliberately obscuring the different meanings of discrimination, or asserting that all negative judgments reflect discrimination, plays on our country’s racial guilt and people’s understandable resistance to being associated with such ugliness.

The culture has communicated the false idea that expressing conservative views on issues related to homosexuality either in school curricula or the polling place is not only bigoted but also violates the separation of church and state:

Far too many Americans have a serious misunderstanding about the relationship between morality and religion. People of faith have been deceived into believing that morality is the same thing as religion, and therefore they mistakenly believe that they should not advocate for policies that reflect their moral beliefs. Basing our decisions about public policies, laws, or elections on values and beliefs (even those that may derive from religious doctrine) does not constitute the establishment of a state religion.

The same people who argue vociferously against the presence of religiously informed political decisions that are conservative in nature are curiously silent with regard to those liberal Catholics, Jews, United Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Unitarians, and Episcopalians who are politically active in the movement to effect speech codes and revolutionize marital laws.

No one ever charges Catholics who oppose the death penalty because of their religious beliefs of violating the separation of church and state.

No one ever charged Martin Luther King Jr. with violating the separation of church and state when he said,

“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. . . .”

People who attend churches or synagogues that affirm liberal views of homosexuality and same-sex marriage and who express those views in school or in the polling place are never accused of violating the separation of church and state or of trying to impose their religious views.

One could argue that those who attend houses of worship that support legalized same-sex unions are similarly attempting to enshrine in law their religious beliefs. Consistency would demand that the political efforts of homosexualists who attend liberal churches be considered as suspect as the efforts of those whose religious beliefs lead to opposition to same-sex marriage.

People from diverse faith traditions and no faith could all arrive at the same position on a particular public policy. For example, although Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Baptists, and atheists may all oppose abortion because they value human life, the reasons for that valuation of life differ.

If there is a secular purpose for the law (e.g. to protect nascent human life), then voting for it does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The sources of the various parties’ desires to protect pre-born life are not the concern of government. It would be not only absurd but also unethical for the government to try to ascertain the motives and beliefs behind anyone’s opposition to abortion and equally unethical for the government to assert that only those who have no religious faith may vote on abortion laws. Such an assertion would most assuredly violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The same goes for issues related to homosexuality.

All laws reflect or embody someone’s morality. The moral views of people who hold conservative theistic world views are no less valid in the public square than the moral views of those who hold liberal theistic world views or atheistic world views—which, of course, are also faith-based.

The debate over same-sex marriage increasingly occupies center stage, with homosexualists arguing that retaining the traditional definition of marriage is both immoral and unconstitutional.

What is marriage?

What is the purpose of marriage? What are the factors or conditions that determine its legitimacy? Is it a public and legal recognition of companionship, emotional affinity, and sexual attraction only? Or, is it somehow tied to an objective reality integrally connected to sexual complementarity?

Historically, both in this country and around the world, marriage has been understood to be the union of one man and one woman. Societies recognize, celebrate, and legally sanction this particular relationship because it is the type of relationship in which children will potentially be born and raised. Because procreation and effective parenting are essential for the sustenance and continuance of healthy societies, legal recognition of this type of union is a compelling state interest.

Homosexualists tell us that marriage is solely a private institution

If or when private actions or relationships have no impact on the public good, the government must remain uninvolved. If, however, private actions or relationships impact the public and are adjudged harmful, society is not only entitled but obligated to legislate. The reason that our government provides for the legal recognition of any union is that society understands that through such unions, the private impacts the public.

Society has determined that private unions impact society to a sufficient degree to warrant government involvement. Historically, society has determined that since marriage is fundamental to the health of society, it is the right and responsibility of society collectively to define marriage. The fact that society has made mistakes and included a criterion that was not fundamental to marriage (i.e. with anti-miscegenation laws, meaning laws banning interracial marriage) does not mean that society has been wrong on all criteria. Tradition, sociology, biology, psychology, philosophy, natural law, and, religion, many religions, in fact, have held that both men and women are crucial to the fulfillment of children’s needs, and the fulfillment of children’s needs is crucial to the health of society.

If marriage were solely a private institution that was concerned only with the subjective feelings of individuals—as homosexualists claim it is—and if it had no impact on the public good, then there would be no justifiable reason for the government to be involved at all. And if society decides it is an exclusively private institution that is concerned only with the subjective feelings of individuals, there is no justification for prohibiting plural marriages.

Homosexualists also claim that marriage is a civil right.

Homosexualists assert that marriage is a civil right to which homosexuals are entitled, ignoring, however, the fact that as it now stands all homosexual adults enjoy the right and privilege to marry. They simply do not have the right to redefine marriage.

Marriage is an institution, and access to marriage is not a civil right. Our civil rights are very specific rights that are accorded to individuals because of their status as humans. Civil rights are not accorded to couples, but rather to individual persons. These rights are based on universal, objective human characteristics, not on subjective individual feelings, desires, “orientations,” “preferences,” or volitional conduct. Rights are inalienable, which means that the government cannot legitimately grant them or take them away. The government merely protects them.

Our civil rights include the following:

freedom of religion

freedom of speech

freedom of press

freedom of assembly

the right to life

freedom from involuntary servitude

In contrast, the government can legitimately define an institution and limit its membership in accordance with that definition. Marriage is a very particular institution, and access to marriage is a privilege; it is not a civil right.

When homosexuals claim that they prefer only members of their own sex as romantic and sexual partners, they are acknowledging that men and women are fundamentally and significantly different. Many, including experts in the fields of sociology, psychiatry, psychology, theology, and neuroscience, assert that these differences are not exclusively anatomical, but emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual in nature.

Since men and women are fundamentally and significantly different, unions composed of the same sex must necessarily be of a different nature from unions composed of different sexes, and, therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that each type of union would impact society differently.

Further, society has concluded that the only type of union that truly benefits the public is a union between two unmarried adults of opposite sex who are not closely related by blood. In evaluating the inherent merits of or contributions to the public good that homosexual unions bring, society has concluded that legal recognition is not warranted.

Every adult has the legal right to marry. Homosexuals are not demanding a civil right that is denied them based on a universal, objective human characteristic; they are being denied the right to redefine the institution of marriage by eliminating one of the criteria that society has deemed essential: sexual complementarity.

Homosexuals as individuals are not being denied the right to marry. They are being denied the right to choose the sex of their marriage partner. Others are denied the right to choose the numbers of their partners. Still others are denied the right to choose the age of their partner. And yet others are denied the right to choose the blood proximity of their partner.

Polyamorous people who love more than one person cannot redefine marriage by eliminating the criterion of numbers of partners. Incestuous couples cannot redefine marriage by eliminating the criterion regarding close blood kinship. And pedophiles cannot eliminate the criterion of minimum age. None of these groups of people are being denied their civil rights even though they cannot marry whom they’d like to marry. They are being prevented from unilaterally redefining marriage which is a public institution that affects the public good.

Most of them—with the exception of pedophiles—may pursue emotional intimacy, engage in sexual relations, and set up households together, but society is under no moral obligation to provide legal sanctions or benefits for these relationships simply because those involved experience love and sexual attraction.

Another intellectual sticky wicket for many is the accusation that banning homosexual marriage is the same as banning interracial marriage.

As with most of the secular arguments used to defend and justify the view that homosexual conduct is morally tenable, there are underlying presuppositions implicit in this analogy that are concealed—and flawed. The most salient of these unproven presuppositions is that race is ontologically or existentially equivalent to homosexuality.

That is to say that comparing same sex marriage to interracial marriage requires prior assent to the proposition that homosexuality is a state or condition similar in fundamental ways to race. But that is a false proposition, one with which many African Americans disagree; one with which many theologians disagree; one with which even some “queer theorists” disagree; and one which science has not proved.

Laws banning interracial marriages were based on a deeply flawed understanding of both race and human nature. It was based on a false belief that different races were of fundamentally different natures. As Dennis Prager explains:

There are enormous differences between men and women, but there are no differences between people of different races. Men and women are inherently different, but blacks and whites (and yellows and browns) are inherently the same. Therefore, any imposed separation by race can never be moral or even rational; on the other hand, separation by sex can be both morally desirable and rational. Separate bathrooms for men and women is (sic) moral and rational; separate bathrooms for blacks and whites is (sic) not. . . . a black man's nature is not different from that of a white man, an Asian man, an Hispanic man. The same is not true of sex differences. Males and females are inherently different from one another.

Laws that permit only heterosexual marriages are in no way equivalent to laws that banned interracial marriage because homosexuality is in no way equivalent to race. Laws banning interracial marriages were based on the erroneous belief that whites and blacks are by nature different, when, in fact, whites and blacks are not by nature different. Laws that permit only heterosexual marriages are based on the true belief that men and women are by nature different. Therefore, it is permissible and right for laws that regulate marriage take into account the very real differences between men and women.

Moreover, Thomas Sowell explains that “The argument that current marriage laws ‘discriminate’ against homosexuals confuses discrimination against people with making distinctions among different kinds of behavior. All laws distinguish among different kinds of behavior.”

A black man who wants to marry a white woman is seeking to do the same action that a white man who wants to marry a white woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits an interracial marriage is wrong because it is based on who the person is, not on what he seeks to do.

But, if a man wants to marry a man, he is seeking to do an entirely different action from that which a man who wants to marry a woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits homosexual marriage is legitimate because it is based not on who the person is but rather on what he seeks to do.

Neither homosexual men nor heterosexual men can marry men. Both homosexual men and heterosexual men can marry women. Homosexual men are not denied the right to participate in the unique institution of marriage. They are choosing not to exercise their right.

Marriage currently has four central defining criteria: blood kinship, numbers of partners, minimum marrying age; sexual complementarity. History has seen marriages between family members, marriages of children to adults, and polygamy. In virtually no society, have we seen homosexual marriages (in those very few societies which permitted marriage-like relationships to be ceremonialized, the relationships were primarily temporary unions between adult men and adolescent boys who were expected ultimately to marry woman after this rite of passage.) Polygamy, marriage between adult men and young girls, and incestuous marriages have been fairly common throughout history, while homosexual "marriage" has been extraordinarily rare. Homosexualists are seeking to jettison the one criterion that has been the most enduring throughout time and across cultures. In other words, their efforts are the most radical.

Some argue that traditional marriage constitutes an inappropriate imposition of one segment of the population’s morality on the entirety of society.

In making that argument, however, they fail to acknowledge that legalized same-sex marriage would equally represent the imposition of someone’s moral beliefs on all of society. Same-sex marriage would impose on all of society the beliefs that gender is irrelevant to marriage, that marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with childbearing and child-rearing, and that homosexuality is morally equivalent to heterosexuality.

One could make the argument that a polygamous marriage would not harm my particular marriage or even that an incestuous marriage would not harm mine. But ultimately the disuniting of marriage from procreation, and marriage from gender renders it meaningless as a public institution.

So, how society will be affected:

The belief that same-sex unions are equal to heterosexual unions in their potential to affect children and society positively will proliferate.

The religious and/or speech rights of those who hold traditional or conservative beliefs on homosexuality will be diminished.

The belief that fulfillment of emotional and sexual desires constitutes the fundamental basis for marriage will spread.

The belief that same-sex unions are equal in moral value to heterosexual unions will proliferate.

Schools will be compelled to include homosexual identities and families as normative in curricula.

The view that sexual fidelity is an integral aspect of marital commitment will diminish. Whereas sexual fidelity is an indispensable, integral component of the traditional view of marital commitment, for many homosexual men, sexual fidelity is neither expected nor desired. They hold that extra-marital sexual outlets neither diminish nor attenuate commitment.

The belief that marriage is irrelevant will increase as it has in Scandinavia. Stanley Kurtz, research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution has written a number of articles that analyze the impact of the legalization of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia. According to Kurtz “a majority of children born in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents.”

Widespread societal approval of homosexuality through legalized same-sex marriage will increase ethically dubious ways of creating families. Surrogacy, pregnancies resulting from sperm and egg donations or sales, and in vitro fertilization would increase as the numbers of same-sex unions increase.

Demands for legalized polygamy will increase. If society accepts the proposition that marriage is a private institution centrally concerned with emotional feelings and sexual attraction rather than sexual complementarity and procreation, then polygamy is just around the corner.

Another term that is abused in the service of normalizing homosexuality is “judgmentalism.” Conservatives are often asked, “Who are you to judge?”

Charges of judgmentalism are confusing because, although we know that God expects us to make judgments, there is something unseemly about being judgmental.

Since being judgmental can mean forming opinions or making decisions authoritatively or wisely, and in this sense is certainly legitimate, what precisely do critics who level this charge mean?

They mean one or both of the following:

“Don’t tell me something I’m doing is wrong.”

“People should judge only their own behavior, not anyone else’s.” (This is, of course, a moral judgment.)

It’s both legitimate and right to make moral judgments about conduct. Everyone does it all the time, including those who make the judgment that homosexual acts are moral. We forfeit the right to be parents, teachers, rabbis, preachers, or lawmakers, and we forfeit a just and civil society if we forfeit the right to judge between right and wrong.

One rarely hears that society should refrain from judging racism or greed or selfishness or pedophilia or adultery or polygamy or incest between consenting adults. What’s the difference? The difference is that now many have judged that homosexual conduct is moral conduct and demand that everyone else accept that judgment and express that judgment or none at all.

What opponents really find objectionable is not that people make moral judgments publicly, but rather that the particular moral judgment conservatives make about homosexuality is one with which homosexualists disagree.

Homosexualists misapply the "Golden Rule" in their efforts to promote heretical views of the nature and morality of homosexuality. The Golden Rule, which is found in both the Old and New Testaments, properly understood, does not mean that believers should affirm all persistent human desires. Nor does it mean that people of faith should refrain from making public statements regarding the immorality of homosexuality. The Torah teaches "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah.” This means that religious believers should affirm to others God's Word--the entirety of God's Word--in a godly way. It is absurd to suggest that in order to live out the Golden Rule faithfully either Jews or Christians must affirm every desire that another human experiences, including even sinful desires.

Often homosexualists proclaim "Judge not lest ye be judged" as biblical justification for the position that religious believers ought not to state publicly that homosexual behavior is immoral. But this verse means that we are not to engage in unrighteous judgment. We're not to hypocritically condemn the speck in the eye of others while ignoring the plank in our own. We're to recognize the universality of sin and offer forgiveness as we have been forgiven. This verse does not prohibit people of faith from making distinctions between moral and immoral behaviors.

One related point regarding Jewish, Christian, or Moslem expressions of moral disapproval: Some will argue that religious people should remain silent regarding the immorality of homosexual acts. They say, just love homosexuals into the Kingdom, and allow the Holy Spirit to work on their hearts or consciences. But what other sin would we make that statement about. Would we ever say, “Just remain silent about the sin of adultery, polyamory, pornography, or racism,"? Just love adulterers, polyamorists, porn users and racists into the Kingdom and let the Holy Spirit work on their hearts,”?

While the mainstream news media, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, churches, synagogues, public schools, and increasingly, laws promote false and destructive ideas about homosexuality, we must speak the truth in the public square.

One final cultural issue that must be addressed is homosexual adoption:

What are the essential criteria for evaluating the suitability of families seeking to foster or adopt children?

They must have the financial means to support them and be able to provide a clean, nurturing environment.

If it is a couple, they must demonstrate that they have a stable, committed relationship.

But is that all?

If that’s all, then we as a society should cheerfully turn over children to the care of loving, committed, stable incestuous couples who are able to provide a safe, nurturing environment. Incestuous couples could make the case that their desire to adopt reveals their sense of responsibility in that procreation could result in serious birth defects. Shouldn't loving incestuous couples be allowed to have children? Is it fair to allow society's prejudice to prevent them from this basic right?

And we should cheerfully and comfortably relinquish children to the care of loving, stable, committed polyamorous families who are able to provide a safe, nurturing, environment.

Love, commitment, stability, safety, and support are, indeed, essential factors when evaluating the appropriateness of a family seeking to foster or adopt. But so too is the moral nature of the relationship of the adoptive family.

Those who recoil at the idea of incestuous couples or polyamorists fostering or adopting do so out of the same kind of moral evaluation of the nature of incest and polyamory as others do out of a moral evaluation of homosexuality. Those who would prohibit loving, stable incestuous couples or polyamorous partners from fostering or adopting do so for the same kind of reason that those who would prohibit loving homosexual couples from fostering or adopting do: a belief that these kinds of relationships are morally flawed.

Some argue that the belief that homosexual conduct is morally flawed is a prejudice and cannot be imposed on all of society. But then one could reasonably argue that the belief that adult consensual incest and polyamory are immoral is an ignorant, antiquated, provincial prejudice that ought not to be imposed on all of society.

Study after study has revealed that children fare best when raised by both a mother and a father. In addition, children have rights. They have a self-evident right to be raised, when possible, by the biological parents who produced them. If those parents are incapable of raising them, these children deserve to be in homes that closely approximate a natural family.

If we measure harm only in concrete, measurable ways -- dirty house, lack of food, untended infections, emotional detachment -- then we ill-serve the children we purport to care so deeply about. When society and the government that represents it are called on to make decisions regarding the placement of children in families, it is not only appropriate but critical that we take into account the moral nature of the relationships of the potential caretakers.

Why Seek Freedom from Homosexuality?

INTRODUCTION

Have You Thought About Your Options?

So, you think you may be gay. Or perhaps youve decided you are and
feel a sense of relief that youve finally been able to reach a
conclusion to the matter. Or maybe youve tried the gay life and found
it hasnt worked for you, but are wondering if there is anything else
for you.

I would ask you, as you read this book, to please think of me as a
friend who cares about you deeply, as one with whom youve shared just
what youre feeling. I know something of what you are going through
because Ive faced the same problem. I followed my feelings, and doing
so made me so unhappy that I finally attempted suicide. That may cause
you to feel uneasy, but please read on.

You see, you have good reason for that uneasy feeling. My unhappiness in
homosexuality was not unusual. Dr. Arno Karlen writes, No one knows
better than homosexuals that gay is a euphemism. There is a squalid side
of the lifelavatory gropings, prostitution, rampant venereal disease,
play-acting, promiscuity, mercurial and crisis-ridden romances, abuse of
alcohol and drugs, guilt, suicide. Almost all homosexuals except gay
militants have said to me that the causes are as much inherent in
homosexuality as the anti-homosexuality of the rest of society. The gay
world has a bruising, predatory quality that gives many in it a far
grimmer view than their heterosexual sympathizers hold. The reason Im
sharing with you is that Ive found a better way. Its not quick or
easy, but it has brought me joy and peace, whereas homosexual behavior
brought me grief and misery.

You do have options! You are not shut up to just one course of action.
You dont have to live a homosexual life if you dont want to. You can
find freedom from homosexuality, as I now have, and I recommend that
course to you without reservation.

You might be asking, Why should I seek freedom from homosexuality? The
road is usually long and sometimes painful. I will have to deny myself
something I find extremely pleasurable. Is it worth it? Why seek
freedom?

Thats why Im writing this. I want to share with you not only my own
experience, but the findings of many otherspsychiatrists,
psychologists, sociologists, other gay people findings that may answer
your questions and spare you a great deal of pain and disappointment.

PART I

WHY SEEK FREEDOM FROM HOMOSEXUALITY?

CHAPTER 1

Seek freedom because you want true love!

If you and I were talking face-to-face, and you were to ask me, Why
should I seek freedom from homosexuality? here is what I would try to
tell you. The first reason is because if you do not, it is virtually
certain you will never find true love. Let me explain.

The testimony of two homosexual men.

Listen to two homosexual men, Donald Webster Cory and John P. LeRoy, who
warn that if a homosexual expects that his casual sexual partner will,
somehow or other, turn out to be a lover or life companion, his chances
of having these hopes fulfilled by reality are rather small. In the few
instances in which this sort of thing does happen, it is an event that
excites widespread excitement among gay circles. Stories, true or
exaggerated, are handed down to the effect that the...[man] met his
lover at a gay bar, bath, or what have you, and is now happily married
for umpteen years. The impressionable young homosexuals who hear these
stories see it as the realization of the Cinderella legend and do what
they can to try to make it come true for themselves.... Unfortunately,
far too many homosexuals view gay life as a means of finding a lover
when its function is primarily one of finding a trick!

They note further, Homosexuality can sometimes be a world fraught with
jealousy, envy, and conquest. When it becomes known that so-and-so has a
lover, he immediately becomes a greater prize than he was before....
Would-be suitors are led to become more intensive and subtle in their
efforts to have a sexual affair...or perhaps even to win the lover for
themselves. Intense jealousy, secrecy, covetousness, and suspicion
become more and more manifest.... It sometimes takes a week or two for
the partners to find out that they cannot stand each other. Those with
greater endurance take longersometimes several years.3

The testimony of secular sociologists.

Listen to these words of a secular (non-religious) sociologist. It is
almost impossible for an observer to fail to note the divergence between
the homosexuals romantic fantasies and his life experience. On the one
hand he projects (particularly through the homophile movement) an image
of romantic love; on the other, he shares knowledge of an extraordinary
amount of male prostitution and compulsive searching for partners (or
cruising, as this activity is called). Homosexual pornography has a wide
market; sexual interest in strangers, particularly in adolescent
strangers, knows hardly any bounds.... Every homosexual is aware of the
ubiquity of casual relationships, ones that last a few minutes or at
most one night, of the hunger for love that meets constant frustrations,
and of the fleeting nature of relationships that start with great
promise and vows of fidelity.4

Another secular sociologist, himself homosexual, writes, While the idea
that all lesbians seek totally monogamous relationships while all gay
men reject monogamy is clearly a myth, it does seem clear that among gay
men a long-lasting monogamous relationship is almost unknown. Indeed
both gay women and gay men tend to be involved in what might be called
multiple relationships, though of somewhat different kinds.5

The testimony of a secular psychiatrist.

...Most homosexual contacts are often nothing more than mere spurts of
physical intimacy, lacking in anything other than a transient, symbolic,
hedonistic gratification. When closely examined these episodes are
often part of a complex psychodynamic system which, despite appearances
to the contrary, is actually designed to avoid being emotionally bound
or committed to another person.... Mere orgasm itself becomes the
limited aim of the relationship. The partner is often treated as an
expendable object to be quickly replaced or discarded.6

The testimony of a secular psychologist.

One of the benchmarks of homosexuality is promiscuity The need for
proof of desirability is insatiable. Driven from partner to partner,
the gay skips from one conquest to the next along the interminable
yellow brick road to love everlasting. His sexual compulsion is like
the drug addicts need for a fix or the alcoholics unquenchable thirst.
To be gay is to go to the bar, lamented one male in a series of
profiles of homosexuals, to make the scene, to look, and look, to have a
one-night stand, never really to love or be loved, to know this and yet
to do this night after night year after year . Two-thirds of gay men
are constantly on the hunt for instant sex, according to Kinsey . Three
out of ten homosexual men have never had a relationship that survived
the one-night stand, and most gay men have never had an exclusive
relationship with another gay that lasted as long as six months. Gay
magazine pertinently remarked that what starts early in ones
experience as a way of avoiding involvement can become a life-style that
leaves in its wake a genuine emptiness. Lesbian relationships are
likely to be more stable . Most of the unions last three years or less.
7

The testimony of a secular nurse

...Research... indicates that total monogamy in gay male couples is
rare.... In the study of Blumstein and Schwartz, 82 percent of the gay
couples were nonmonagamous in their current relationships and in later
years, monogamy was virtually nonexistent...8

The testimony of a study by two homosexual men.

In 1984, Dr. David P. McWhirter, and Dr. Andrew M. Mattison, published
The Male Couple, an in-depth study designed to evaluate the quality and
stability of long-term homosexual couplings. Their study was undertaken
to disprove the reputation that gay male relationships do not last....
After much searching they were able to locate 156 male couples in
relationships that had lasted 1 to 37 years. Two-thirds of the
respondents had entered the relationship with either the implicit or the
explicit expectation of sexual fidelity. The results show that of those
156 couples, only seven had been able to maintain sexual fidelity.
Furthermore, of those seven couples, none had been together more than
five years. In other words, the researchers were unable to find a single
couple that was able to maintain sexual fidelity for more than five
years.9

McWhirter and Mattison admit, The expectation of outside sexual
activity was the rule for male couples and the exception for
heterosexuals. Heterosexual couples lived with some expectation that
their relationships were to last until death do us part, whereas gay
couples wondered if their relationships could survive.10

The testimony of the Kinsey Institute.

Alan Bell of the Kinsey Institute found that A modal view of the white
male homosexual, based on our findings, would be that of a person
reporting 1,000 or more sexual partners throughout his life-time, most
of whom were strangers prior to their sexual meeting and with whom
sexual activity occurred only once. Only a few of these partners were
persons for whom there was much care or affection or were ever seen
socially again.11

The testimony of the Centers for Disease Control.

Drs. Harry W. Haverkos and Robert Edelman wrote in The Journal of the
American Medical Association, In early studies conducted by the CDC
(Centers for Disease Control), homosexual men with AIDS reported a
median of 1160 lifetime sexual partners...12

The testimony of the homosexual magazine The Advocate.

In 1995, the largest gay magazine in America, The Advocate, published
the results of questionnaires returned by 2,500 of its adult male
homosexual readers. In the course of the relatively short average life
span of the respondents (thirty-eight years old), only 2% had had sex
with just one man. Fifty-seven percent had more than 30 male sex
partners, and 35% had more than 100. In the past year alone, about
two-thirds (63%) had more than one male sex partner and the large
majority of these (over 60%) had five or more; only 28% had just one
partner. About half (48%) said they had engaged in three-way sex in the
last five years, 24% group sex (four or more).13

The reasoning of a man who found freedom.

These considerations led William Aaron to seek a way out. He wrote, The
high mortality rate among the marriages of my friends...was...nothing
to compare with the attrition rate among homosexual liaisons. Two men
would discover each otherthe love of a lifetimefind an apartment
together, set up house-keeping, and before the paint was dry on the
walls, one of them would move out. It appeared that fidelity among
homophiles was impossible; that those who managed to stick it out as
life partners did so only if they agreed to wink at extramarital
escapades.14

What am I saying?

No one can say that you are guaranteed true love in heterosexuality. Sin
makes finding true love difficult anywhere. But what I am saying is
that you are far more likely to find true love if you work through a
recovery program, get free of your homosexuality, find someone of the
other sex who truly loves God, and truly loves you, and marry them
after Gods own ordinance.

What about homosexual marriage?

You might be thinking, What about all those people who are seeking homosexual marriage? Please consider these thoughts.

First, the number of people who sought to be married was very small
compared with the number of people who have same-sex attractions.

Second, among those who did seek to be married, many did so to
champion the cause of gay liberation rather than because of a
deep-seated desire to be married. Others came because it was a chance to
get their name in the papers and to boost low self-esteem. Not everyone
was there because of true love.

Third, the experience of other countries throws light on the question.
World magazine notes that in Scandinavian countries where de facto gay
marriages (actually called civil unions) are legal, they are rarely
entered into by homosexuals. A study published by Yales William
Eskridge in 2000 showed that after nine years, only 2,372 homosexual
couples took advantage of the Danish law allowing gay unions. After four
years only 749 gay Swedes and only 674 gay Norwegians bothered to get
married. Todays gay activists in Scandinavia, having gotten what they
wanted, now admit that their case for homosexual marriageparticularly
that allowing gays to marry will encourage a monogamous life-stylewas
only a tactical argument. The goal, says Mr. [Stanley Kurtz, a research
fellow at the Hoover Institution], citing two prominent gay thinkers,
was not marriage but social approval for homosexuality.15

Fourth, we need to watch for the rest of the story. Consider this from
a recent liberal news-magazine: A Toronto lesbian couple has filed for
what would be Canadas first same-sex divorce. The womenidentified in
court papers as M.M., 41, and J.H., 61got married in June 2003, a week
after the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the Canadian constitution
guaranteed gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. M.M. and J.H. had
been together 10 years; they separated five days after their wedding.
But the divorce could be tricky. The Federal Divorce Act still defines a
married couple as consisting of a man and a woman, so a judge would
have to rule the law unconstitutional before same-sex spouses could
legally part ways.16 Gay marriage does not guarantee gay bliss!

Ronald G. Lee spent many years trying to make homosexuality work for
him. It didnt! He writes about a friend of his who was in a disastrous
same-sex relationship for five years. His partner was unfaithful, and
an alcoholic with drug problems.... When Vermont legalized same-sex
marriage, Wyatt [not his real name] saw it as one last chance to make
their relationship work. He and his partner would fly to Vermont to get
married. This came to the attention of the local newspaper in his
area, which did a story with photos of the wedding reception. In it,
Wyatt and his partner were depicted as a loving couple who finally had a
chance to celebrate this commitment publicly. Nothing was said about
the drugs or the alcoholism or the infidelity. But the marriage was a
failure and ended in flames a few months later. And the newspaper did
not do a follow-up. In other words, the leading daily of one of
Americas largest cities printed a misleading story that probably
persuaded more than one young man that someday he could be just as happy
as Wyatt and his partner. And that is the sad part.17

I find no joy in the unhappiness of others. I am sad for these people
and for all who think the answer to their pain is some kind of
marriage. You see, I have found that the real answer is in finding
freedom from homosexuality. I only write these things in the hope that
you might be spared some of the pain I have experienced.

The testimony of an avowed lesbian.

Listen to Camille Paglia, an avowed lesbian, who writes, After a period
of optimism about the long-range potential of gay mens one-on-one
relationships, gay magazines are starting to acknowledge the more
relaxed standards operating here, with recent articles celebrating the
bigger bang of sex with strangers or proposing monogamy without
fidelitythe latest Orwellian formulation to excuse having your cake
and eating it too.18

As you think about these things, please remember that I have purposely
used secular and gay sources that no one can accuse of being anti-gay.
The picture they paint is a powerful argument for seeking freedom from
homosexuality.

CHAPTER 2

Seek freedom because you dont want to be hurt.

Theres more! Not only are you unlikely to find true love if you choose
to live as a homosexual, there is a fair chance that you may find
violence.

Look at the statistics concerning violence among homosexual men.
Two gay men tell us that violence among gay male lovers is one of the
best kept secrets in the gay community.19 Island and Letellier lament
that only a handful of articles have been published by the gay press
including Battered Lovers published by the Advocate in 1986; Breaking
the Silence: Gay Domestic Violence by San Francisco Coming Up! (now
the Bay Times) in 1989; Naming and Confronting Gay Male Battering by
Boston Gay Community News in 1989; The Other Closet, by the Dallas
Observer in 1990; Till Death Do Us Part: Domestic Violence Strikes Gay
Relationships, by San Francisco Sentinel, in 1990; and Domestic
Violence: A Serious Problem Lacking in Resources, by the Washington
D.C. Blade in 1990.20

If so little has been written on the subject, could it be because it is
not a real problem? Island and Letellier say No! Domestic violence is
a big problem for Americas 9.5 million adult gay men. We estimate that
as many as 500,000 gay men are victims, and, of course, equal numbers
are also perpetrators.21 Therefore, the probability of violence
occurring in a gay couple is mathematically double the probability of
that in a heterosexual couple.22 Their figure of 500,000 annual
victims of gay mens domestic violence represents a likely, reasonable,
and non-speculative estimate. We hope it is too high, but we suspect
that it is right on the mark.23 Thus, only substance abuse and AIDS
adversely affect more gay men, making domestic violence the third
largest health problem facing gay men today.24 The Director of the Gay
Mens Domestic Violence Project at the Community United Against
Violence (CUAV) in San Francisco stated that domestic violence may
affect and poison as many as 50 percent of gay male couples.25

A recent publication of the Association of Welcoming & Affirming
Baptists, a militant pro-gay group, further confirms this problem.
Kenneth V. Dodgson, M.D., writes, Gay men, as well as adolescent gays,
report high incidence rates of violent or abusive behavior, either as
recipients or perpetrators, usually involving their same-sex
partners.26

Look at the statistics concerning violence among lesbians.

Nor are the statistics more encouraging in lesbian relationships.
Bologna, Waterman, and Dawson...discovered a high incidence of abuse in
their survey of a self-selected sample of 174 lesbians. About 26% of
their respondents reported having been subjected to at least one act of
sexual violence; 59.8% had been victims of physical violence; and 81%
had experienced verbal or emotional abuse. At the same time, 68% of the
respondents reported that they had both used violence against their
current or most recent partner and had been victimized by a partner.
Similarly, in a survey of a nonrandom sample of 1,099 lesbians, Lie and
Gentlewarrior...found that 52% of the respondents had been abused by a
female lover or partner and that 30% admitted having abused a female
lover or partner. Of those who had been victims of abuse, more than half
(51.5%) reported they also had been abusive toward their partners.27

As Renzetti states, It is doubtful that researchers will ever be able
to measure accurately the prevalence of homosexual partner abuse, but
this is not to say that these studies have no value. Their importance
lies in the fact that they clearly demonstrate that lesbians and gay men
not infrequently aggress against their intimate partners in ways that
are physically and emotionally abusive and sometimes violent.28

Why?

Theres an old saying: Hurt people hurt people. Professor Robert
Gagnon says, The high incidence of other destructive behavior in
homosexual circles (unsafe sex, sadomasochism, fisting, high rates of
non-disclosure of HIV/AIDS status to partners) may be attributable in
part to buried anger arising out of the pain of rejection...29

Men and women who are tempted to engage in homosexual behavior are
usually so tempted because they were hurt when they were children,
either in their relationship with their same-sex parent, or through
sexual abuse. The result is defensive detachmenta wall of anger and
fear with which they seek to protect themselves. Their unmet needs from
childhood drive them to seek love from persons of the same sex, but
their defensive detachment makes it impossible for them to find it. If
anger is the major part of their detachment, they may become abusers; if
fear is the major part of their detachment, they may be abused. And, of
course, anger and fear can change places from time to time so that one
can at one time be the abuser and at another the abused!

A word of encouragement.

Please understand, Im not saying there is not hope for you. Listen
again to William Aaron, a man who got out of homosexuality: If youre
homosexual and unhappy about it, believe me you dont have to stay that
way. Cut your ties with the old life and get yourself reconditioned. If
you can do it by yourself, fine. If you need help, get help. But dont
sit around saying, Poor me, here I am stuck with being a faggot. You
dont need to be stuck with it, any more than you need to be stuck with
alcoholism, or pills, or acrophobia, or xenophobia, or any other
unwelcome response or habit pattern. Discover your endless potential for
change and development.30

CHAPTER 3

Seek freedom from homosexuality because you dont want disease and early death!

Look what can happen!

Think about the tragic experience of Ken Horne, a young man who moved
from Oregon to San Francisco in search of love, looking for a man he
could marry. When he did not find a husband, wrote homosexual
journalist Randy Shilts, he took the next best thingsexand soon sex
became something of a career. It wasnt love but at least it felt
good.... As the focus of sex shifted from passion to technique, Ken
learned all the things one could do to wring pleasure from ones body.
The sexual practices became more and more esoteric; that was the only
way to keep it from getting boring.31 Yet he still felt, Life is a
disappointment.32 Ken Horne was the first reported AIDS case in San
Francisco33 and at 1 A.M. on November 30, 1981, George Kenneth Horne,
Jr., gasped one last tortured breath and lapsed into perfect
darkness.34

If you and I could sit down together and talk, not only would I urge you
to seek freedom from homosexuality because, if you do not, it is
virtually certain you will never find true love, and may experience
violence, but also because, unless you seek freedom, there is very real
danger that you may get AIDS or some other sexually transmitted disease.

The alarming truth from the Centers for Disease Control.

The most recent (at the time of writing) report from the Centers for
Disease Control states, Of the estimated 342,148 male adults and
adolescents living with HIV/ AIDS, 61% had been exposed through
male-to-male sexual contact, 18% had been exposed through injection drug
use, 13% had been exposed through high-risk heterosexual contact, and
7% had been exposed through both male-to-male sexual contact and
injection drug use.35

The warning of a militant homosexual man.

Gabriel Rotello, a militant gay man, wrote an important book sounding
the warning about AIDS. He states, Despite the fact that by now
virtually everyone knows how AIDS is spread and how to avoid it, it is
continuing to saturate the gay male population at the same levels it
always has.36

To those who trust in condoms to keep them safe he says, In fact, the
condom code does not seem ever to have been very successful in
containing the epidemic. The drop in new infections in the mid-eighties,
for example, probably occurred because most of the susceptible gay men
were already infected. Now that a new generation of susceptible young
men have entered the gay world, they are getting infected at rates that
indicate that about half will eventually get AIDS, which is about the
same ratio as in the older generation.37 He warns, But if gay men
mistakenly believe that the epidemic is waning and return to the habits
of the past, rapidly transmitting, new, drug-resistant strains of HIV
across newly reconstituted viral highways, the potential for tragedy is
almost unthinkable.38

A psychiatrist warns of what lies ahead for those who do not seek freedom.

Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons writes, Research indicates that 50 percent of
men with same-sex attractions will be HIV-positive by age fifty, the
majority will have more than twenty sexual partners per year, and less
than 9 percent of those with same-sex attractions will have
relationships that last more than three years.39 He continues, ...In
one study, nine percent of homosexual males between the ages of twenty
and twenty-two were already HIV-positive.40

Humanly, I wish AIDS did not exist! But it does. Ive seen five friends
die from it. If you dont know what Im talking about, please visit an
AIDS hospice and see the people there who are in the last stages of the
infections this terrible disease makes them vulnerable to. I plead with
you; dont let this happen to you!

What about medical help?

Someone may ask, But what about all the new drugs I hear about? These
drugs do prolong healthy life, but they are not cures. They do not work
for everyone. They have side effects which some find almost impossible
to tolerate. They postpone the final stages of the disease, but do not
rob it of its power to killto kill slowly, painfully, terribly!

Listen to an educators review of a gay magazine for persons with AIDS.
Not surprising is the conglomeration of HIV ads in the opening third
(24 pages out of 33) of the 10th-Anniversary issue of POZ, the journal
founded as the morale booster for those who...now test positive for the
lethal HIV infection. All of the major drug companies are apparently
competing in what is now a lucrative enterprise in a large and growing
market, selling medication that may suppress the destruction of the
human immune system and thereby prolong the lives of the HIV-infected.
These lifetime medications are costly (up to $1200 a month), but give no
one the promise of a cure. Their side effects are so severe that many
of the infected cannot continue the medication; as many as half of those
on HIV medication suffer from the three debilitating side effects,
diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting (Top 10 Side Effects, POZ). And thus
the life-prolonging drugs may lead one to mountainous debt and
bankruptcy, and may turn life into extreme pain and misery. In the same
issue, POZ declares that Sex is the most powerful force in the world,
to be worshiped and learned from... Although its as plain as the nose
on your face, POZ refuses to see that the sex god is a devouring god.41

The reports from the scientists seeking a cure for AIDS state that none
is on the horizon. No vaccine against it is in the offing. I beg of you,
dont play Russian roulette with your life. Seek freedom.

The problem of other venereal diseases.

But theres more. Consider the life of Michael Callen. In June of 1982,
age 27, Michael Callen collapsed from dehydration and was admitted to
the hospital with a high fever and violent, bloody diarrhea.42 It was
then that he learned that he had AIDS.

He writes, It wasnt until I was officially diagnosed with AIDS that I
faced squarely just how much sex, and how much disease, Id had. With
the gentle prodding of a doctor who was filling out my CDC AIDS case
report form, I calculated that since becoming sexually active in 1973, I
had racked up more than three thousand different sex partners in
bathhouses, back rooms, meat racks, and tearooms. As a consequence, I
had also had the following sexually transmitted diseases, many more than
once: hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis non-A/non-B; herpes simplex
types I and II; venereal warts, amebiasis, including giardia lamblia and
entamoeba histolytica; shigella flexneri and salmonella; syphilis;
gonorrhea; nonspecific urethritis; chlamydia; cytomegalovirus (CMV), and
Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) mononucleosis; and eventually
cryptosporidiosis and, therefore, AIDS.43

Tragically, despite his books brave title, Surviving AIDS, his own
energetic efforts to survive AIDS, and the best efforts of a wonderful
doctor, Michael Callen died of AIDS-related complications in December of
1993. He was thirty-eight years old! As I read his book, I could not
but think that, had I known him, I would have liked him!

I do not share his story because it points out the promiscuity that is
part of homosexuality, though it does that. I do not share his tragedy
because it points out the dangers of AIDS, though it does that. I share
his experience because it reveals that in addition to HIV/AIDS, one who
engages in homosexual behavior runs the risk of a host of other sexually
transmitted diseases (STDs).

According to a report by the Institute of Medicine, Men who have sex
with men are at greater risk for many life-threatening STDs, including
HIV infection, hepatitis B virus infection and anal cancer compared to
heterosexual men. Other STDs of concern among men who have sex with men
include anal syphilis, urethritis, and a range of oral and
gastrointestinal infections.44

The gay newspaper, New York Blade News, warns, Reports at a national
conference about sexually transmitted diseases indicate that gay men are
in the highest risk group for several of the most serious diseases.45

Why is this something you should be concerned about? The Medical
Institute for Sexual Health writes, STDs pose a major public health
problem for many reasons. First, many people have no visible symptoms to
warn them or any potential sexual partner of infection. Undetected, the
diseases often spread between sexual partners and from mother to
newborn. STD infections can result in serious, even life-threatening
problems. Cancers, infertility, pregnancy and birth complications,
neurological problems, chronic pain and death can all result from STD
infection.46

What does all this mean? The Centers for Disease Control reports
outbreaks of hepatitis A among men who have sex with men (MSM) are a
recurring problem in many large cities in the industrialized world.47

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 1976 to 1994
suggest that the prevalence of hepatitis B is about five times the rate
among men who have sex with men as it is among those who are exclusively
heterosexual.48

Human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause genital and anal warts. Anal warts
occurring alone are strongly associated with anoreceptive intercourse.
Therefore, although they are found in women, they are much more common
in homosexual or bisexual men.49 In fact, in one series of 260
homosexual men seen by proctologists, 134 (51.5 percent) had anal
warts.50 Infection can also occur in women.51

Why is this significant? At the Fourth International AIDS Malignancy
Conference at the National Institutes of Health in May of 2000, Dr.
Andrew Grulich stated, most instances of anal cancer are caused by a
cancer-causing strain of human papilloma-virus through receptive anal
intercourse. HPV infects over 90 percent of HIV-positive gay men and 65
percent of HIV-negative men, according to a number of studies. He
called the rising rates of anal cancer the next great health threat to
homosexual men. 52

Rectal gonorrhea infections are frequently found in homosexual men. One
study found this rectal infection in 25 percent of homosexually active
research participants. Today, about one-third of gonorrhea strains are
resistant to treatment with penicillin and tetracycline.53

One study found that homosexuals contracted syphilis at three to four
times the rate of heterosexuals.54 This causes special concern because
Dr. Ronald O. Valdiserri, deputy director of the Center for Disease
Controls National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention, has warned,
Syphilis outbreaks among gay and bisexual men, while a major concern in
and of themselves, also signal the potential for a resurgence in HIV
transmission.55

Then there is Gay Bowel Syndrome, a term first used in the 1970s to
describe various gastrointestinal problems. Gay bowel syndrome
constitutes a group of conditions that occur among persons who practice
unprotected anal intercourse, anilingus or fellatio following anal
intercourse.56

Lesbians are also at risk for venereal diseases.

Lesbians are also at risk. A study of the medical records of 1,408
lesbians demonstrated a higher prevalence of BV (bacterial vaginosis),
hepatitis C, and HIV risk behaviors in WSW (women who had sex with
women) as compared with controls.57

What weve shared illustrated.

I could go on with more studies of more sexually transmitted diseases,
but I hope what you have read has been sufficient to help you think.
Perhaps this illustration by Professor Thomas Schmidt based on secular
studies in a chapter titled The Price of Love will make things
clearer. He writes, Suppose you were to move into a large house...with a
group of ten randomly selected homosexual men in their mid-thirties.
According to the most recent research from scientific studies, whose
authors are without exception either neutral or positive in their
assessment of homosexual behavior, and with the use of lower numbers
where statistics differ, the relational and physical health of the group
would look like this. Four of the ten men are currently in
relationships, but only one of those is faithful to his partner and he
will not be in a year. Four have never had a relationship that lasted
more than a year, and only one has had a relationship that lasted more
than three years. Six are having sex regularly with strangers, and the
group averages almost two partners per person per month. Three of them
occasionally take part in orgies. One is a sadomasochist... Three of the
men are currently alcoholics, five have a history of alcohol abuse, and
four have a history of drug abuse. ...Five regularly use at least one
illegal drug, and three are multiple drug users. Four have a history of
acute depression, three have seriously contemplated suicide, and two
have attempted suicide. Eight have a history of sexually transmitted
diseases, eight currently carry infectious pathogens, and three
currently suffer from digestive or urinary ailments caused by these
pathogens. At least three are HIV-infected, and one has AIDS.58

William Bennett, former Secretary of Education, on ABC's "This Week,"
November 9, 1997, stated, "...Smoking takes seven years off your life.
If you're a homosexual male in this country, it takes 30 years off your
life...66 is life expectancy for smokers, 43 for a male homosexual. This
is tough news. It's not pleasant to hear. But it's very important, and
it's part of telling the truth... The last numbers I looked at from the
C.D.C. and The New England Journal of Medicine was that HIV was 430
times more likely to occur in a homosexual male, [age] 20 to 30, than a
heterosexual male... Death is what we are talking about."59

Surely you value your health. Surely you value your life. Then please,
seek freedom from homosexuality, and start today. To engage in
homosexual behavior, or to refuse to deal with the causes of your
desires for such activity, makes no sense at all from the standpoint of
your health!

CHAPTER 4

Seek freedom because you dont want to end up old, unwanted, and alone.

What does the future hold for those who abandon themselves to homosexuality?

If you are finding it difficult to think about seeking freedom from
homosexuality it may be that you are shutting your eyes to some
unpleasant facts. You may be refusing to ask yourself what the future of
such choices holds. Surely this is not wise. As Charles F. Kettering
put it, My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the
rest of my life there.60

The testimony of a gay man in counseling.

Consider the experience of a psychologist who was counseling a young man
called Bill, age 26. As they worked together, one day Bill said, Do
you see why AIDS is not a major concern for me? Im getting older and my
body isnt as attractive as it used to be. Sometimes I feel like it
doesnt matter if I die early because by the time I am thirty Im dead
anyway. I wont be attractive to the people that matter to me and I am
not sure I can handle the rejection.61

The testimony of two other gay men.

Extreme? Perhaps, but listen to these words by two gay men who looked
ahead. Numerous psychologists, sociologists, and men of letters have
written at great length on the aloneness of man in todays impersonal
mechanized world of gadgets, technology, and scientific management. The
homosexual is perhaps even more alone because of...his homosexuality...
He needs a life mate even more desperately, he feels, because of his
increased need for communication with others like himself. As a result,
he searches assiduously for the ideal type of person, who, he imagines,
might help put an end to his problem and his search. He may not be a
drinker, but he goes to gay bars, cruises the streets, and makes regular
appearances at other places where homosexuals congregate, in hopes of
meeting his ideal type. Each passing sexual encounter is hoped to be the
one and only, but numerous short-lived affairs are usually the
result. Time goes by. Years pass. The attractiveness of youth fades. The
muscles become flabby. Gray hair increases. Bald spots appear. The
affairs continue. As the man gets older, he must work harder to coax
others to take an interest in him. If this fails, there is the despair
of old age, to be ended only by the inevitability of death.62

The testimony of a gay newspaper editor.

A gay newspaper editor in his mid-sixties says, Regarding my sex life, I
put zero effort into the chase. I am not interested in pursuing paths
that inevitably lead to rejection. And ninety-nine out of a hundred
times, the older man is rejected sexuallynot only by the young, but by
the old. We are the discards, wanted by few and feared by many.63

The testimony of a gay hustler.

Nobody loves you, goes the sad refrain, when youre old and gay....
Ive never seen such desperate faces on men over forty, marveled one
young hustler. Hanging around the gay bars night after night with the
look of death in their eyes. I, myself, dont dare look in a mirror.64

The reasoning of a man who sought and found freedom from homosexuality.

As you think about this, do what Mario Bergner did. He looked around the
gay bars he frequented. In the many shadowy corners hid older
homosexual men. Their eyes were glassed over and deeply empty.
Hopelessly, they stared at the younger men in the bar. The younger gays,
myself included, referred to these men as trolls. Trolls were
subhuman creatures who never saw the light of day. They lived in the
night and were fed by the memories of their long lost youth.... The
glassed-over hopelessness in the eyes of the trolls grieved me. Still
drinking my vodka martini, I thought, Surely God loves these men. Surely
God intends more for their lives than this. Then, looking at my
reflection in a nearby mirror, I asked myself, Will my eyes one day be
dark and empty like theirs?65

On another occasion Bergner read a one-person play by Joe Orton, a gay
playwright, The Passion of Lady Bright. The play tells the story of an
aging male homosexual who is no longer young enough to attract
bed-fellows. His walls are covered with the signatures of all the
one-night stands he has brought home over the past twenty years. As the
play unfolds, he tries to remember the faces attached to the hundreds of
signatures that adorn his walls. Some he remembers; ...others he
cannot. It is a sad play, but a truthful one, as in the end he realizes
he is an aging homosexual with no one to love. In the play, Lady Bright
is really a burned-out old queen living in a monologue, utterly alone
and without hope.

After finishing...this play, I fell to my knees in horror.... At that
point, I remembered one of my most frightful memories from the gay
lifestyle.

It was Christmas Eve, four years earlier. Several friends and I went
out for a drink at one of our favorite gay bars. The city was covered
with a layer of freshly fallen snow, and large flakes quietly and slowly
dropped from the sky. As we walked from our car to the bar, a church
bell struck midnight. Hey, its Christmas morning, one of my friends
said. Merry Christmas.

Just as we approached the front door of the bar, it swung open and out
stumbled a drunken older homosexual man. He fell on the snow-covered
sidewalk, let out a profane expletive, managed to return to an upright
position, and then staggered past us. The same friend who had wished us
all a Merry Christmas contemptuously sneered, how would you like to be
that old fag on Christmas morning?

As he said this, a shocking stillness came over me. With piercing
sincerity I spoke out the thought I knew we all feared. In thirty
years, I am going to be that lonely old fag on Christmas morning.
Without a doubt, if we continued as we were, we would all one day
become...old trolls hiding in the shadows of gay bars. What we become
when we live our lives apart from God is horrible.66

Mario Bergner looked ahead and decided to seek freedom from
homosexuality. Married and a father today, he writes, Nancy and our
children are my greatest personal treasures here on earth67

How will you spend your life?

Ask yourself this question: When my life is over, what will I have to
show for it if I have wasted it, looking for love in all the wrong
places, and not finding it? Seek freedom from homosexuality so you
wont be plagued, not only by terrible loneliness, but also by grief
over a life that was wasted for nothing. Think what you could accomplish
with the hours you spend cruising, looking for a sexual partner. Think
what you could accomplish in the time you spend on the internet, looking
at pornography, or turning yourself on with sexual banter in a chat
room. How will you feel as your life draws to its inevitable close when
you think of these things? Are there not things you could do that you
will rejoice over, rather than sorrow about, in your final hours? As
Benjamin Franklin said, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander
time; for that's the stuff life is made of."68 Missionary statesman
Frank C. Laubach has said, I have this minute in my control. It is all I
really have to work with.... It is magnificent or drab or vile as the
thoughts which fill it.69 Someone has put it this way: "...Life....is a
succession of opportunities....which we may seize and handle and turn
to our profit, or which we may neglect to our loss." 70 Muriel Spark
wisely observes, "If I had my life to live over again, I would form the
habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would
practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is not another
practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not
to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of
life.71

What does your future hold? The choices you make today shape the life
you will live tomorrow and the thoughts you will have when life is over.
Look around you. You can see what lies ahead as age overtakes you, if
you will. Wont you change course while you still can?

CHAPTER 5

Seek freedom or you may become a slave!

In addition to losing your chance for true love and family, risking
contracting HIV and/or some other venereal disease, becoming a victim of
violence, and finding yourself in a life with no future, I urge you to
seek freedom from homosexuality because, if you do not, you run a high
risk of becoming a slave.

Many homosexual persons become addicted to alcohol and/or drugs.

There is an extraordinary amount of addiction among those who identify
themselves as homosexual. Dr. William Wilson refers to a number of
studies of alcoholism and drug addiction among male and female
homosexuals, which were recently summarized by Israelstam and Lambert,
who reported a 30 percent incidence of alcohol and drug abuse among male
homosexuals and a 40 percent incidence among lesbians. These are much
higher rates (approximately 3 times for males and 20 times for females)
than for the heterosexual population.72 What are they trying to escape?
What pain are they seeking to numb?

The reality of sexual addiction.

You might be thinking, I use sex for my escape! Dr. Harold Wahking, a
psychotherapist, and Gene Zimmerman write, Some people....hope that
sexual love will heal their inner childs wounds and thus crave sexual
experience much like those similarly addicted to drugs.73 They ask,
What is your favorite defense against emotional pain? Some people
cover hurt with anger. Others cry. Bulimics may make themselves vomit.
Others get drunk. Others turn to sexual experience. The common thread
relating these all too human behaviors is self-medication for pain.
When a bulimic induces vomiting, endorphins (forms of a kind of morphine
that the body naturally produces) are released. This chemical protects
from pain somewhat and may even, at first, trigger a mood of elation.
The high generated may become addicting. Sex addicts use sexual
contacts to release these endorphins.... This is a very difficult
disorder to restrain...74

Applying this to the problem of same-sex attraction, they write,
Homosexuality usually takes on the characteristics of addiction. Over
time, sex usually becomes the center of the homosexuals life just as
alcohol or cocaine may become in another persons life. A strong
tendency is established to use sex as a kind of self-medication.
Whenever the homosexual person is emotionally distressed by such
experiences as work disappointment, fear of illness, or rejection by a
friend, he or she may seek sexual experience in order to obtain a
chemical high to mask the emotional distress.... Gradually, having a
normal homosexual experience is not enough, and so there is a tendency
to increase the dose, first by more frequent sex and then by
increasingly dangerous sex.75

You may be asking, How does one tell if one is an addict? Dr. Arnold
Washton and Donna Boundy, both specialists in treating addictions,
write, ...The four cardinal signs of addiction are (I) obsession; (II)
negative consequences; (III) a lack of control; and (IV) denial (1)
that the...activity is a problem they cant control and (2) that the
negative consequences have any connection whatsoever to
the...activity.76

They note that people get trapped in stages. Stage 1: Infatuation. Our
early experiences with a drug or activity leave an imprint on usit
provides a welcome effect. Stage 2: The Honeymoon. Under stress, we seek
out that remembered experience for comfort or relief. We get only its
positive effects and expect them to last. Stage 3: Betrayal. The drug or
activity that has served us so well turns on us. We no longer get the
high from it. Stage 4: On the rocks. Ignoring mounting evidence of
the drug or activitys negative effects, we try to recapture the
honeymoon by increasing our involvement with it. Stage 5: Trapped. Now,
the more we struggle to break the addiction by willpower alone, the
tighter its grip becomes.77

They point out, Usually the addiction-prone person has massive unmet
dependency needs left over from childhood... As an adult...he
relentlessly searches for something or someone to make him feel safe,
secure, and whole.78

Dr. Grant Martin writes: A common component of alcoholism or substance
abuse is that the person has a pathological relationship with a
mood-altering chemical. The same is true for the sexual addict. The
sexaholic substitutes a deviant relationship with sexual thoughts and
behavior for a healthy relationship. In many ways, addiction derives its
compelling force from a failure to achieve intimacy. The obsession with
sex replaces human bonding and caring. For the addict, preoccupation
with sexual things....progresses to where sex in some form is necessary
to feel normal. But to feel normal is also to feel isolated, guilty, and
powerless, since the mood-altering activity is destructive and
unhealthy. The person becomes dependent on sex to cope with life. Sex
becomes the only source of nurturing that is within the control of the
addict. Obtaining the mood alteration becomes the primary focus of life
to which everything else is sacrificed or compromised.79

If heterosexuals can be sexual addicts, why not homosexuals also?

I know how ones mind can rebel at such notions, but let me ask you
this. If there are heterosexual sexual addicts, why could there not be
homosexual sexual addicts? Dr. Patrick Carnes, the pioneer in the field
of sexual addiction, writes about Jim, a Lutheran seminarian. He went
to school full-time and worked part-time as a youth director in a
parish. He was sensitive, intelligent, and committed to his career. He
was also driven by his sexual compulsion. His pattern was to frequent at
night a well-known park area by a local river which was known as a gay
cruising area. He would stand by the same tree each time and allow
himself to be picked up. His sexual contacts were in the dark with
strangers. He always felt humiliated. One time he was severely beaten.
What prompted Jim to seek help was not a river incident. Rather, he
was sexual with one of the young adults in the parish he served who had
visited him at his apartment. He became aware of how vulnerable he was
and in his fear sought therapy. Once in therapy, he realized he really
had two issues. First, his homosexual orientation would be a problem in
his ministry. And second, his sexual compulsiveness was an obstacle to
developing significant relationships. His issues around homosexuality
were compounded by his sexual addiction.80

The nature of an addict.

What happens when one is sexually addicted? Charlotte Eliza Kasl says,
Addiction is, essentially, a spiritual break-down, a journey away from
the truth into emotional blindness and death. ... As the thinking and
the behavior of the addict moves further and further away from reality,
thinking processes become impaired.... Sexual addicts become
progressively dishonest, self-centered, isolated, fearful, confused,
devoid of feelings, dualistic, controlling, perfectionistic, blinded to
their disease (denial), insane, blaming (projection), and dysfunctional.
In short, their lives become progressively unmanageable.81

The process that leads to addiction.

Whats the process that leads to addiction? Dr. Mark Laaser, a therapist
and recovering sex addict, says the three building blocks of sexual
addiction are fantasy, pornography, and masturbation. Fantasy is
created by a need to satisfy deep longings. Pornography displays images
of how to do that. Masturbation is the physical expression of perhaps
the only touching or nurturing...the addict receives. The three...are
involved in a cycle. Pornography stimulates fantasy. Fantasy needs to
be expressed. Masturbation allows a release of that need. There is a
problem in this cycle. While it may satisfy the physical need for sex,
it never satisfies the emotional and spiritual hunger that rests deep in
the soul. Addicts have never learned to feed that hunger in a healthy
way. Instead, they try to gratify this need in the easiest and most
accessible way. Sex...allows the addict to escape and thereby cope
temporarily with his feelings.... More and more sexual activity,
however, also creates more and more negative feelings. This vicious
cycle makes sexual addiction a degenerative process. It gets worse.82

Beware of denial!

Its natural to think, Addiction could never happen to me! Can you be
sure? I was so sexually addicted that I attempted suicide because I
could see no other way out.

The life of Montgomery Clift.

Think about the life story of Montgomery Clift, handsome, gifted, more
affluent than you or I are ever likely to be, and one of our great
actors. His biographer writes, He was mesmerizing to watch in Red River
and A Place in the Sun, in From Here to Eternity and The Young
Lions.83 Yet, when he died, aged 46, he was an uninsurable,
unemployable joke.84 What happened?

He was born on October 17, 1920, in Omaha, Nebraska. After his twin
sister had been delivered, his mother, Ethel, known as Sunny, was
reported to have screamed, No! I dont want another child, not now,
not ever...85 She had an extremely unhappy and disturbed childhood,
one she spent her adult life trying to resolve in ways that had direct
and catastrophic effects on her three children.86 His father, Bill, was
a peripheral figure in the Clift family.87 He was a docile,
henpecked workaholic who sat on the sidelines 88 Monty always thought
of Bill as sort of weak and helpless compared to his mother,
remembered actor friend Billy Le Massena.89

He discovered a love and talent for acting and began a career in the
theatre. When he was eighteen, he went to Mexico with thirty-year-old
Lehman Engel with whom he began a full-blown affair.90 By the time
they returned from Mexico, their affair was already on the wane...91

By late 1948, the first faint glimmers of Montys self-destructiveness
became perceptible... Billy Le Massena noticed that his drinking was
more pronounced, and his libido was soon out of control too. Rumors flew
around that he had been spotted in gay bars and bathhouses, and his
lawyer only just managed to hush up a scandal when he was arrested for
trying to pick up a boy92 He became close friends with torch singer
Libby Holman and together they ingested prodigious quantities of drink
and drugs...93

His downward spiral accelerated, so friends advised him to get therapy,
but there is therapy, and there is therapy. Dr. Larry Crabb and Dr. Dan
B. Allender write, Picking a therapist is like picking a restaurant.
They all serve food, but the menus can be very different.94 Not all
counseling helps. Some therapists hurt. Montys therapist was New York
analyst William Silverberg, a fifty-three-year-old homosexual who
subscribed to something known a liberal behaviorism. Unfortunately,
Silverbergs belief that analysis of childhood problems was unnecessary,
and that the key to mental health and happiness lay in what he called
effective aggression, was to prove disastrous for Monty. Without
trying to halt what everyone else could see were the early stages of
chronic alcoholism and addiction, the doctor more or less recommended
that Monty do what he liked. Repeatedly Montys friends and family would
plead with Silverberg to do something about his patients drinking;
repeatedly the doctor would ask them not to meddle.... As Billy Le
Massena observed, It was clear to everyone that Silverberg was actually
encouraging Monty into excesses rather than preventing them. Sexually,
too, Monty behaved in a more compulsive way than he had ever
done....and was prey to more than one blackmail threat. Monty continued
to see Billy Silverberg, whom he called my Mephisto, for fourteen
years.95 The result? ...Chemical oblivion, sexual depravity and mental
torture...characterized the last fifteen years of his life.96 Even
when the newly sober Billy Le Massena managed to drag him along to a few
Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Monty still clung to Billy Silverbergs
diagnosis that he was not an alcoholic.97 This despite the fact that
each night Monty would get paralytically drunk by himself and scarcely
manage to find his way back to the hotel in the early hours of the
morning: the next day he would wake up with the shakes.98 He rented a
house up in Ogunquit, a Maine equivalent of Long Islands gay enclave,
Fire Island, and gave himself up to bouts of sado-masochistic sex with
boys he picked up on the beach99

He spent the last six and a half year of his life, leading what he
called a phenobarbital existence in his own personal twilight zone.
...He was in bad shape, losing his memory and his balance and suffering
from alcoholic hepatitis.100 ...The drug intake began to include
illegal substances as dangerous as heroin, and his sexual debauchery
resulted in frequent beatings from male prostitutes.101

Montgomery Clifts last weeks were excruciatingly painful and
desperately lonely.102 On the weekends of the 9-10 and 16-17 July he
went...to the Fire Island house he had rented the two previous summers.
Fellow homosexuals in the Pines community called him a sad faggot, and
he hardly strayed out of doors.103 ...By the end his only friend was
the Demerol he was pumping into his body with ever greater
frequency.104 On July 23, 1966, he was found dead in his bed, the
victim of a heart attack.

Having seen the misery that addiction to homosexual behavior, alcohol,
and drugs brought Montgomery Clift, you might be tempted to ask, But
what choice have I? My feelings are real and powerful. I cant just
ignore them. What can I do?

There is hope! There is another option!

Please dont despair. Let me share the true story of a young man I have
known and worked with for nine years who found a better way. His name is
Joseph C. and he lives in Canada.

At home my father didnt exist for me. Most of the time he didnt even
live at home but stayed at his camp. My brothers often stayed at the
camp with him, but I didnt go with them.

My older brothers and my father would wrestle in our
kitchenfinger-fighting, pushing, shovingand it would get out of hand.
Chairs would be pushed over, the table shoved across the floor, the
Fridge knocked over, while my father shouted, You bring blood on me,
Im going to bring blood on you. He would never let them get the upper
hand, and I watched all this in fear.

I always felt unsafe and afraid, especially at night. My older brother
(he was seven years older than I) would scare me by telling me there was
something in the corner and saying, I hope your hands and feet are
under the blanket so it cant get you. He tortured me. One way he
tortured me he called the sun torture. He held me down on the ground on a
sunny day and forced me to stare at the sun while his fingers held my
eyes open. He liked to squirt milk up my nose from a baby bottle. I was
afraid to be near him because he would hit me or pinch me, and it hurt!

I was too close to my mother, taking responsibility for things that
were beyond my control. When I came home from school, she often got me
to knit, crochet, sew, and cook. While I was very good at these things, I
felt deeply ashamed about doing them.

School was sheer agony. Sitting in my classroom on my first day at
school, I was lonely, afraid, and shy. I put my lunch box on the floor
next to my chair and the boy behind me slid his leg up next to it and
kicked it. I remember thinking, He doesnt like me.

Recess and lunch time were also lonely and painful time for me because I
didnt know how to make friends with the boys. They already seemed to
know each other and I was an outsider.

The girls seemed more friendly and less threatening. Two of them
approached me and said, Little boy, what is your name? Youre so cute.
I was too shy to respond.

When the teacher told us to form two linesthe boys on one side, the
girls on the otherI wasnt sure what line I should be in. I knew I
wasnt a girl but I didnt fit in with the boys.

As the years passed, I was pretty much a loner. Sometime I would play
with other children, but I could never let anyone get close to me even
though I longed for a male friend. I can remember thinking, Isnt there
someone like me that I can become friends with?

In the eighth grade I became the target of a bully. I was frightened
and embarrassed as this went on for about two years. I prayed to God for
help but nothing happened. Day after day I faced fresh humiliation
until I thought the only way out was to kill him. Fortunately he moved,
but the fear and nightmares continued for years.

I had always felt different but when I went through puberty at age
thirteen, I felt a strong, sexual attraction to men. I was horrified. I
was trying to be a good Christian and tried hard to suppress those
feelings but my mind and my body were always betraying me. I began the
round of praying, begging, repenting, failingyear after year. I thought
that since God had made me this way, he must hate me. I didnt choose
to be this way and I didnt want to be this way. What else could explain
it? Was I possessed? Was I the Anti-Christ?

On my first day of school in the tenth grade, a boy asked me if I was
gay. I didnt answer but it hurt! I quit school after that year and went
to work to earn money to help the family. We were very poor.

Life started to get a bit better. I met a girl who was working at a
convenience store. She was fifteen and I was seventeen. I liked her. She
was everything I wanted in a womancute and nicebut I could see she
had been hurt too. She knew nothing of my pain and I saw no reason to
tell her anything about it. We began dating and got married a few years
later.

I lived my life ignoring my pain and hers too. I often lost my temper
and then became depressed. She didnt know what was wrong with me and
neither did I. We just existeddoing what we had to do to survive. We
had two children, but they werent the answer either.

After several years of marriage, we came to a place of crisis.
Something had to change. I explained to my wife that I was sexually
attracted to other men. She couldnt believe it and I was numbI
couldnt believe I had told her of my struggle. But it was the turning
point for us. It was the first step on the road to healing.

I saw a book in our local Christian book store titled, How Will I Tell
My Mother? by Stephen Arterburn which told the story of his brothers
struggle with homosexuality and eventual death from AIDS. In it were
listed the address and phone number of Homosexuals Anonymous. I called
and asked if there was really hope and help. John J. was on the line and
explained the process of healing, telling me it would take time but
that it would pay rich dividends if I chose to walk that road.

I was thrilled and have been walking that road now for nine years. It
hasnt been easy. Sometimes its been downright difficult. But John J.
stayed with me through all my ups and downs and the rewards I am
experiencing today make it more than worthwhile.

For the first time in my life, I understand myself and God has been
rebuilding my life, changing me, and making me the man He created me to
be. Fears have been overcome, wounds have been healed, family
relationships have been improved, anger has been forsaken, and
depression has been overcome. My marriage is on track and recovery is
teaching me how to be a good husband. My children are a blessingIm so
proud of themand recovery has equipped mea man who had almost no
fatheringto be a good father. This loner is developing good and loving
friendships with other men and Im finding them to be a great treasure
that I wouldnt trade for anything sin ever offered. Its been quite an
adventure.

God is also using the things I have learned in recovery to help other
peopleboth those who struggle with same-sex attractions and those who
have been wounded in other waysand its thrilling to see Him work
through me in their lives, mending what sin had broken and helping them
become whole persons.

Is life perfect? No, because Im not in heaven yet and I still have to
grow up into Christ in many things. But I am so happy I cannot find
the words to express it. Ive found such joy in Christs new life of
freedom.

What will you choose?

I hope you too will trust God. He wants to heal your pain and set you
free to be the person He created you to be. As for me, I would describe
myself as follows: Once bound but now set free! Please join me.

You may be asking, Are you guaranteeing that all will be joy for me if I
enter recovery? There are no guarantees in this life. I cant
guarantee Ill live to finish this book. I might have a heart attack and
die before I write the last word. You cant guarantee a drunk driver
wont kill you the next time you go out on the street. Nevertheless, we
go on with what is best for us whether we have a guarantee or not. So
lets not prattle about guarantees.

Ponder the statistics.

But do look at the statistics and let them guide you to a reasonable
decision. Kathleen Erwin, in what I would have to describe as a pro-gay
article in the International Journal of Health Services states,
...studies continue to show significantly higher rates of depression,
substance abuse, and attempted suicide among lesbians and gay men than
among heterosexuals in the United States.105

She cites a study by Jay and Young of over 5,000 lesbians and gay men
in the United States and Canada, ranging in age from 14 to 82. They
reported that 40 percent of gay men and 39 percent of lesbians had
attempted or seriously considered suicide; to those who attempted
suicide, 53 percent of the men and 33 percent of the women said their
homosexuality was a factor.106 Gibson and others have calculated the
risk of suicide among gay and lesbian youth to be three to six times
that of heterosexual adolescents.107 High rates of alcoholism and
other drug abuse are also reported among gays and lesbians...108 Gays
and lesbians also frequently report feelings of self-hatred, isolation,
depression, and low self-esteem.109 These data point to high levels of
emotional distress among gays and lesbians...110

That is not the picture of a happy group of people. Compare their life
with that of Joseph and ask which you want. Then ask yourself whether or
not you are willing to engage in some hard work to get it, or will you
simply allow yourself to float, taking what seems to be the easy way,
but proves in the end to be very painful.

Of course you will not always be happy in recovery. No one is always
happy. Further, your wounds may have to be probed and cleaned out.
Antiseptics may sting. But think of the long-term outcome. Choose
freedom, choose joy, choose lifeand work for them, even if the road be
steep and rocky at times.

As Dr. Louis Bisch says, Nobodys life is smooth and easy. Everybody
has ups and downs. Weve got to expect that. And, since we should expect
it we should also be ready for it, prepared for it. Then, when it
happens we accept it naturally, as a challenge, as a measure of the
stuff of which we are made. Indeed, we should even be eager to try
ourselves out, to discover how capable we really are.111 After all,
Nothing but courage can guide life.111

CHAPTER 6

Seek freedom because you want a real relationship with God.

As weve been sharing reasons you might want to seek freedom from
homosexuality, you may have wondered, Why hasnt he said anything about
the Bible? Hes a Christian. Isnt what God says all-important here?

Yes, it is, but Ive not talked about the Bible so far for two reasons.

First, Ive met a number of people with same-sex attractions who have
complained about Christians hitting them over the head with the Bible.
Sometimes the complaint is deserved because the person who talked to
them was harsh, unfeeling, and did not manifest the love of Christ while
sharing what the Bible says. At other times this was just an excuse to
do as they pleased and blame a Christian for their continuing behavior
about which they felt guilty. Blame is always a major part of denial in
any addiction, and those of us who struggle with homosexuality are often
not exceptions.

Second, I wanted you to see some reasons why God says what he does about
homosexual behavior so you could hear Him with an open mind. Ask
yourself, What father would be indifferent to whether or not his child
entered a lifestyle characterized by tendencies to promiscuity, sexual
addiction, alcohol and drug abuse, suicide attempts, violence, venereal
diseasesincluding AIDSand the prospect of a lonely old age without
love? As Dr. Arno Karlen has noted, Homosexuals themselves, despite
expressions of contentment with being homosexual, almost all say, sadly
or fervently, that if they had children they wouldnt want the children
to be homosexual.113 If homosexual behavior is bad for you, doesnt it
make sense that God would give you fair warning?

I dont want to turn you off with a dry-as-dust theology lecture, so may
I first ask you some questions that may give you some insight into why
the question of what the Bible says on this and other matters is so
important?

Think about these two statements. Henry David Thoreau said, The mass of
men lead lives of quiet desperation.113 Jesus said, I have come that
they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10b NIV). The
Bible describes the life God offers as one of love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control
(Galatians 5:22,23).

Which of these two statements comes closest to describing your life today: quiet desperation or life to the full?

Ask yourself some more questions. Are you longing to be loved? You might
answer, Why on earth do you think I go out night after night, cruising
the streets, looking for someone to show me at least something that for
a few minutes feels like love? The Bible offers a personal
relationship with the God who is love (I John 4:16) and who alone can
fill that aching void in your soul. As Augustine, speaking to God, said
long ago, You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless
until it rests in you.115

Perhaps guilt and regret are poisoning your life. That used to be a real
problem for me. The Bible offers full, free forgiveness from the Judge
of the entire world. Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that
through this man [Jesus] forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and
by him everyone who believes is freed from everything (Acts 13:38).

Are you tired of broken relationships? God promises those who cling to
him, I will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5b).

Do you find yourself doing what you hate but cannot stop? The Bible
offers freedom so that you can fight the bondage that overwhelms you
with ever increasing effectiveness. As Jesus, speaking of sin, said, If
the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).

You may be asking yourself, If such a wonderful life is offered, why
dont people come into it? Why is there so much unhappiness in the
world? Why am I miserable? The Bible answers those questions in these
words: My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the
fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken
cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:13). When we turn away
from God, we turn to something or someone else only to find
disappointment and more emptiness and despair.

I am one who turned away from God and tried to find satisfaction
elsewhere. I had not had sex with a man for nearly twenty years, though I
knew nothing about finding freedom from homosexual feelings. A man who I
thought was a friend, who Id looked on as a sort of second father,
suddenly turned on me when I did not follow some of his advice. I now
see he had a sick need to control, but then I only knew I was deeply
hurt. I did not go to the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the
Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
affliction (II Corinthians 1:3,4). I did not turn to the human sources
of comfort He provided: A friend loves at all time and a brother is
born for adversity (Proverbs 17:17). I went back to homosexual acting
out. The result? Momentary relief, then terrible, ever increasing pain
that finally became so intense I tried to take my life!

But there is a way back. Jesus invited me and invites you, Come to me,
all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
is light (Matthew 11:28-30 NIV).

God has given us a roadmap, as it were, in the Bible so that we can find
our way to him. But I had ignored its directions and gone my own way.
You may have too. But there is hope. The longest chapter in the Bible is
Psalm 119a psalm praising God for this roadmap the Bible and the
blessings that come from following it carefully. Since he knows this
world is a dark, confusing, dangerous place, the writer rejoices that
God has taught us how to go through life so as to find God and the life
of fulfillment He offers. Your word, the writer exults, is a lamp to
my feet and a light to my path (Psalm 119:105). He further rejoices
that it is clear instruction. The unfolding of your words gives light;
it imparts understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130).

Wait a minute, you may be saying. I tried to understand the Bible and
I got nothing out of it. The psalmist knew that he needed Gods help
to understand His Word and so he prayed, Open my eyes, that I may
behold wondrous things out of your law (Psalm 119:18) and Your hands
have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your
commandments (Psalm 119:73). He also understood that it is foolish to
ask God for guidance if one does not intend to do what God says, so he
prayed, Direct my steps according to your word: let no sin rule over
me (Psalm 119:133 NIV).

The writer saw clearly the connection between following Gods roadmap,
the Bible, and abundant life. Your testimonies are righteous forever,
give me understanding that I may live (Psalm 119:144). He wrote, Your
testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart
(Psalm 119:111) and Great peace have those who love your law; nothing
can make them stumble (Psalm 119:165).

God is a good Father. He is all-wise. He created uswired us up (so He
knows what will work in our life, and what wont). He loves us (so He
warns us away from the rocks on which others have made shipwreck,
knowing where those rocks are and how destructive they can be). Because
He is all-wise, He cannot be mistaken about what will harm us; because
He is love, He will not withhold anything that is truly good from us. We
must decide whether we will trust Him and walk in His way or turn from
Him and lose the rich, fulfilling life He wants to give us.

Of course God wants us to follow His roadmap in everything, not just
sexuality; but since this is the area with which you are concerned, we
will concentrate on it.

WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES ABOUT SEXUALITY IN GENERAL

Our Lord Jesus and the Apostle Paul, when dealing with sexual questions,
went back to the first two chapters of Genesisto life in the Garden of
Eden before sin entered the world and created all the horrors we know
todaythings like adultery, divorce, rape, incest, abuse (see Matthew
19:3-9; Ephesians 5:28-33). These passages in Genesis tell us how God
intended things to be.

Genesis 1:26-28

Then God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of
the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every
creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own
image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created
them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and
multiply and fill the earth and subdue it...

As you can see at once, right here, in the very first chapter of the
Bible, the Bible asserts and repeats a basic fact of life: that God made
us sexual beingsmale and female. A key reason for Gods doing this was
that humans might be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth so that
they might subdue itsomething Adam and Eve could not have done by
themselves. As psychiatrist Erik Erickson says, generativity, pouring
our life back into future generations, [is] adults most meaningful
function. And that occurs most profoundly in procreation. There, in an
ongoing way, we function in the image of God by participating in His
act of Creation. But this participation is restricted through Creation
itself to the union of the two sexes.116 Thus, as Donald Williams says,
A community of simply one sex does not reflect Gods intention for us
or His character in the world.117

This is reinforced in the expanded account of the creation of humankind in Genesis 2.

Genesis 2:18-24

Then the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I
will make him a helper fit for him. So out of the ground the Lord God
formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and
brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the
man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names
to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of
the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the
Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept
took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib
that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and
brought her to the man. Then the man said, This at last is bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was
taken out of Man. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother
and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Notice that though Adam had daily fellowship with God and though he was
in the midst of a garden with all sorts of animals, God said he was in a
real sense alone and God said that was not good. God was too far above
him and the animals were too far beneath him to give what God knew he
needed.

Notice also that the solution for Adams alonenessa womanwas Gods
idea. And Adam, in his unfallen state, was delighted. His first recorded
words (Genesis 2:23) say that he thought ...the woman to be the
perfect...companion to share his life and divide his labor.118

What God brought to pass in Eden is, He says, His purpose for all time.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to
his wife, and they shall become one flesh (Genesis 2:24).

Dr. John Stott explains, heterosexual intercourse is much more than a
union of bodies; it is a blending of complementary personalities through
which, in the midst of prevailing alienation, the rich created oneness
of human being is experienced again. And the complementarity of male and
female sexual organs is only a symbol at the physical level of a much
deeper spiritual complementarity. To become one flesh, however, and
experience this sacred mystery,...certain preliminaries are necessary,
which are constituent parts of marriage. For this reason a man...will
leave his father and mother...and be united to his wife...and they will
become one flesh... Jesus himself later endorsed this teaching...(Mark
10:4-9). Thus Scripture defines marriage in terms of heterosexual
monogamy. It is the union of one man with one woman, which must be
publicly acknowledged (the leaving of parents), permanently sealed (He
shall cleave to his wife) and physically consummated (one flesh).
And Scripture envisages no other kind of marriage or sexual intercourse,
for God has provided no alternative. 119

WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY

Dr. Ron Sider has written, The biblical case against practicing
homosexuality....rests primarily on the constant pervasive biblical
teaching that sex is a gift intended for the committed relationship of a
man and a woman in life-long covenant. Never is there a hint anywhere
in Scripture that God intended sex in any other relationship.120 While
this is true, it is not the whole story. There are a number of texts
that speak clearly about homosexual activity.

THE OLD TESTAMENT

Leviticus 18:22,23

Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman [have sex with another
man (CEV)]; that is detestable. Do not have sexual relations with an
animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to
an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion (NIV).

Leviticus 20:13

If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have
done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be
on their own heads (NIV).

Its important to understand that these verses do not say that God
detests you! He loves you, but He detests homosexual behavior!

Nor do these verses teach that homosexual behavior is the only behavior
God detests. As the book of Proverbs tells us, There are six things the
Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying
tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked
schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who
pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers
(Proverbs 6:16-19 NIV).

These verses do, however obviously say that God detests homosexual
behavior and opposes it in the strongest way possible. The Cambridge
Bible Commentary on the New English Bible explains: Homosexuality and
bestiality bring about uncleanness because they are a violation of
nature...: men should only have intercourse with women and human beings
with human beings.121

It will not do to seek to evade the force of these words by pointing out
that there are a number of commandments in the Old Testament which the
New Testament makes clear were temporary, and are no longer binding. As
we shall see, the New Testament also condemns homosexual behavior. Thus
Gods prohibition of homosexual behavior is not some temporary law which
we can overlook as outmoded, but is part of His eternal moral law which
is for all people in all times. As you consider the unhappiness that
accompanies homosexuality that we discussed earlier, you see that this
prohibition is an important part of His roadmap to an abundant life.

You may be wondering, What about the death penalty attached to the
prohibition? The Bible says, The wages [what is deserved] of sin [all
sin, any sin] is death (Romans 6:23). Notice, however, that the verse
continues: But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord. As Ed Hurst writes, speaking of those who trust in Christ, As
to the death penalty, it has already been served in Christ.122 In other
words, if you will turn away from living for yourself and trust Christ
to forgive your sin and direct your life, He will give you abundant life
by making you into the person God created you to be. He will also take
away all Gods righteous judgments against you because He suffered that
curse in place of all who will entrust themselves to Him as Lord and
Savior when He died on the Cross.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

Romans 1:26,27

For this reason [because they worshiped and served the creature rather
than the Creator (1:25) God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For
their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to
nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and
were confused with passion for one another, men committing shameless
acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their
error.

Paul is arguing that all men, from the most immoral Gentile person
(Romans 1:18-32) to the most religious Jewish person (2:1-3:9), are lost
without the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus (3:10-26). He says
that God is angry (1:18) because, though he has clearly revealed himself
in nature (1:19,20), men have willfully turned from Him to idols,
things of their own making. Because of this, God gave them up to
whatever they wanted to do: to heterosexual sins (1:24,25), to
homosexual sins (1:26,27), and to various other kinds of sin (1:28-32).
All of these deserve death (1:32), as do all the sins of human beings.

Homosexual behavior is clearly not the only sin that destroys a real
relationship with God, but it is clearly condemned as sin. These verses
tell us that God views all homosexual activity, whether by females or
males, as dishonorable, contrary to nature, and shameless; and it
says that such acts bring a penalty.

Some have tried to evade the force of these words by saying that the
Bible does not condemn loving homosexual relationships, but only
homosexual relationships that are not based on loveexploitive, abusive,
or promiscuous ones. This is a distortion of what the Bible says
because: (1) it requires that we add words like exploitive or abusive or
promiscuous not found in the passage to make the Bible say what it does
not say and, (2) it does not fit the context. Remember, Paul is
dealing with heterosexual (1:24,25) as well as homosexual (1:26,27)
sins. Can you imagine him teaching adultery is only forbidden if the
relationship is exploitive or abusive or promiscuous? Or saying, Its
all right for you to fornicate so long as you are not exploitive or
abusive or promiscuous? Nonsense!

Others have sought refuge in saying Paul is condemning heterosexual men
and women who engage in homosexual acts, but not people with a
homosexual orientation who are simply following their nature. This
ignores the fact that the passage says these acts are the result of
people consumed with passion for one another and that the Bible
teaches our fallen natures are deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV). Rather than telling us, If it
feels good, do it, the Bible tells us to put to death... what is
earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and
covetousness, which is idolatry (Colossians 3:5). Please remember that
the same demands are made on heterosexual persons who are tempted to
pre-marital sex or adultery. God is no respecter of persons or of sins!

To be true to the Scriptures we must face the fact that homosexual
behaviorwhether by men or by womenis condemned without equivocation in
this passage! As Dr. Richard Lovelace wrote, most Bible scholars who
are not themselves homosexuals readily conclude from this passage that
Paul considered homosexual acts to be sinful by their very nature. Even
those who defend the legitimacy of some homosexual practice tend to
conclude that Paul believed this but was mistaken...123 And that
involves denying that the Bible is the Word of God! Are you really
willing to stake your life here on earth and in eternity that Gods Word
is not true?

Dont let the words God gave them up frighten you. As Dr. C. E. B.
Cranfield explains, they simply mean ...God allowed them to go their
own way in order that they might at last learn from their consequent
wretchedness to hate the futility of a life turned away from the truth
of God. ...Pauls meaning is neither that these men fell out of the
hands of God...nor that God washed his hands of them; but rather that
this delivering them up was a deliberate act of judgment and mercy on
the part of God who smites in order to heal (Isaiah 19:22), and that
throughout the time of their God-forsakenness God is still concerned
with them and dealing with them.124

As another writer puts it, ...We can use the parable of the prodigal
son to illustrate what this means and what it does not mean. There the
father gives up the son who forsakes him. In other words, the father
lets him go; the Father in Heaven does not hold anyone back by force
either.... But the Father does not forsake or abandon when He gives up:
He waits and keeps watch for the one who has run away, waiting for him
to turn back from his perversity, for the Father does not give up in
order to destroy, but in order to save...125

Remember, the Father in Heaven condemns all sinhomosexual sin,
heterosexual sin, pride, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, judgmentalismto
bring fallen people to the point where they see that when the Bible
says, None is righteous, no not one (Romans 3:10), it includes
themyou and me! We have done what God said we should not do, and failed
to do what He said we should do. He wants us to come back to Him. But
first we must face the fact that we have wandered away. There is no
distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
(Romans 3:22b, 23). The wages of sin (all sin, any sin, your sin, my
sin) is death (spiritual and eternal death, the opposite of eternal
life) (Romans 6:23). God tells us this because He wants us to call on
the name of the Lord and be saved (Romans 10:13).

What God is telling us is that we need the forgiveness He offers in
Christ to whose account He has charged all the sins of all believers (II
Corinthians 5:21). He promises that if we truly trust in Christ, He
will joyfully receive us, forgive us, and credit the sinless life of
Christ to our account so that we no longer need to fear Gods judgment
(Romans 3:21-5:21). He will give us His Holy Spirit who will begin
making us perfectly like Jesus (Romans 6:1-8:30). He will take us into
His family and will make us his heirsjoint-heirs with Jesus Christ if
we will suffer with Him that we may be glorified with Him (Romans
8:16-18). We will experience a love that none of the horrors of a
sin-cursed earth, none of the demons of hell, nothing in time or
eternity, not even death itself, can take from us (Romans 8:31-38). That
is abundant life!

But we must make a choice. Christ Himself proclaimed, The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the
gospel (Mark 1:15).

What does that mean? C. S. Lewis explains, ...Man....tried to set up on
His own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen
man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a
rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering,
saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track
and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floorthat is
the only way out... This process of surrenderthis movement full speed
asternis what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at
all.... It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we
have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It
means...undergoing a kind of death.... This repentance...is not
something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He
could simply let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what
going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it,
you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It
cannot happen.126
I Corinthians 6:9-11

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of
God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters,
nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality [footnote: The two
Greek terms translated by this phrase refer to the passive and active
partners in consensual homosexual acts], nor thieves, nor the greedy,
nor drunkards, nor revilers, not swindlers will inherit the kingdom of
God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were
sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and
by the Spirit of our God.

Two words were used to forbid homosexual behavior because many in the
Greek world of Pauls day believed that the person playing the female
role (the passive partner) in homosexual intercourse was doing something
shameful, but the one who played the male role (the active partner) was
perfectly proper. As the New Bible Dictionary puts it, It seems beyond
reasonable doubt that Paul intended to condemn homosexual conduct (but
not homosexual people) in the most general and theologically broad terms
he knew.... As Creator, Law-Giver and King, the Lords condemnation of
such behavior was absolutely plain.127

Some try to evade this passages teaching by arguing that the words
translated men who practice homosexuality mean something else. This
approach is like that of Humpty Dumpty who told Alice that glory meant
a nice knock-down argument. When Alice protested, glory doesnt
mean a nice knock-down argument Humpty Dumpty replied scornfully,
When I use a word it means just what I choose it to meanneither more
nor less.128

As Michael Green says, For the Christian, active homosexual behavior is
not legitimate. If this seems very hard..., Paul has some good news.
Homosexuality can be changed. 'Such were some of you,' writes the
apostle... I have seen both male and female homosexuals come to Christ,
and...I have seen them either change in sexual preference so that they
become oriented toward the other sex and in due course marry, or else
remain single and content for Jesus' sake. It simply is not true to say
that the homosexual orientation cannot be broken. It can and it
is...once people commit themselves to Christ, welcome his transforming
Spirit into their lives, and are willing for the change to come
about."129

Note that this passage teaches: (1) that homosexual behavior is
unrighteousness; (2) that homosexual behavior is not the only form or
the worst form of unrighteousnessit is no better and no worse than the
other sins listed; (3) that all forms of unrighteousness, including
homosexual behavior, bar one from the Kingdom of God, unless turned
from; (4) that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Spirit of God, and the love of
Gods people can set men and women free from homosexualityAnd such
were some of you; (5) that anyone can be washed (made clean) from any
and every form of unrighteousness, including homosexual behavior; (6)
that anyone can be sanctified (set free) from any and every form of
unrighteousness, including homosexual behavior; (7) that anyone can be
justified (forgiven because of the death of Christ; counted righteous
because of the obedience of Christ) from any and every form of
unrighteousness, including homosexual behaviorthis is good news!

Look at the wonderful things that come to the person who trusts in
Christ! Do you feel dirty? When you come to Christ, you are washed.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are
like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like
crimson, they shall become like wool (Isaiah 1:18). The blood of
Jesus... cleanses us from all sin (I John 1:7).

Do you feel unlovable? When you come to Christ, you are sanctified which
means...you were claimed by God as his own and made a member of his
holy peoplein Pauls language, a saint...130 Think of it! God wants
you for His own! He wants to make you into the person He created you to
be. He wants to help you become like Jesus!

Do you feel guilty? When you trust in Christ, you are justified. God
says, My Son lived and died in your place. He paid for your sins. He
provided the righteousness you need to stand before Me. You have nothing
to fear. You are no longer guilty in My sight! I look upon you as
completely innocent and utterly righteous because of my Son. And so we
are back to the abundant life Christ promisedcalled the Kingdom of God.

C. S. Lewis writes, ...If we consider the unblushing promises of reward
and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it
would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and
ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who
wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what
is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily
pleased.131

I trust you understand that no one is barred from the Kingdom of God
because he or she has been an adulterer, has engaged in homosexual
behavior, has been a drunkard, or thief! The sins themselves are not the
real issue. Men and women perish because they will not entrust
themselves to Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord. The real issue is
the lordship of Christwill He rule us or will our desires dominate us?

As Gordon Dalbey has written, It is not a sin to be born of a
possessive mother and a distant father, nor to have consequent
homosexual fantasies. It is a sin to refuse to surrender yourself to
Jesus and let God begin to shape you into His image as a man.132

The question we must face is this: Will I surrender my life, including
my sexuality, to Jesus Christ as Lord, or will I live as if I belonged
to myself and owed Christ nothing? Is indulging my sexual desires more
important to me than He is?

WHAT DOES CHRIST SAY ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY?

Some people have argued that since Christ Himself said nothing about
homosexuality it cannot be wrong. Thats a really foolish approach. If
you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you will find that Christ also
said nothing about rape or incest. You surely would not read into His
silence on those issues any approval of such activities!

You may ask, But why doesnt He speak against these things? There was
no need to. The Old Testament had already forbidden such sexual
behaviors (see Deuteronomy 22:25-29 for rape; Leviticus 18:6-18 for
incest) just as it had forbidden homosexual behavior (see Leviticus
18:22; 20:13). There was no controversy among the Jewish people about
any of these subjects, so there was no reason for Christ to say anything
about them. It was only when the Church moved into the Gentile world
where homosexuality was rife that homosexual activity was once more
addressed and clearly outlawed.

As a matter of fact, Christs silence on the matter of homosexuality
should be seen as evidence that He had no quarrel with the view of the
Jewish people drawn from the Old Testament. Christ did not hesitate to
correct current misunderstandings of the Old Testament on such matters
as the Sabbath (see Mark 2:23-3:6) or what constitutes murder (see
Matthew 5:21,22) or adultery (see Matthew 5:27,28). His silence on rape,
incest, homosexuality, and a host of other subjects simply means He saw
nothing in these matters that needed correcting in the current views of
the Jewish people drawn from the Old Testament. He agreed with them on
such matters and therefore passed over those issues in silence.

Furthermore, He made it very clear that He accepted the binding
authority of the Old Testament moral law. He clearly stated, Do not
think that I have come to abolish the Law of the Prophets; I have not
come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I say to you, until
heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, shall pass from the
Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the
least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be
called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches
them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. I tell you, unless
your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees (the
religious leaders of the day who prided themselves on mere external
right behaviors), you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew
5:17-19).

When Christ spoke about the law in this passage, He was not speaking of
Old Testament dietary, ceremonial, or civil laws, but of the moral
lawthings like murder (5:21-26), adultery (5:27-32), honesty (5:33-37),
revenge (5:38-42) and love (5:43-48). Far from abolishing the moral
teaching of the Old Testament, Christ saw that that moral teaching was
far stricter and more inward than the Pharisees imagined.

One would think that everyone would know that all forms of immorality
were unacceptable to Christ. While He was far more tender and forgiving
to those who sinned than were his contemporaries (John 8:1-11), He was
also far stricter in His sexual ethics than were the people of his day.
Witness His stand on the matter of divorce (Matthew 5:31,32; 19:1-9),
His teaching that lust is adultery in the heart (Matthew 5:27,28), and
His statements about how serious one should be in the battle to abstain
from all forms of sexual immorality (Matthew 5:29-30).

Further, Jesus taught that what defiles a person is what comes from his
or her heart and lists those things as evil thoughts, fornications,
thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickednesses, as well
as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these
evil things proceed from within and defile the man (Mark 7:21-23 NASB).
On the word fornications Professor Robert Gagnon writes, No
first-century Jew could have spoken of porneiai (plural) without having
in mind the list of forbidden sexual offenses in Leviticus 18 and 20
(incest, adultery, same-sex intercourse, bestiality).133

The Gospels show us that Jesus did not overturn any prohibitions against
those things the Mosaic Law branded as immoral. They show us One who
regarded sexual ethics as being highly important and who demanded even
more than the Torah did in this area. As Professor Gagnon says, The
idea that Jesus was, or might have been personally neutral or even
affirming of homosexual conduct is revisionist history at its worst.134
Weve looked carefully at several of the passages in the Bible that make
it quite clear that homosexual behavior is contrary to the will of God.
We did not look at all the passages we might have. In addition to those
we have studied together, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon mentions Genesis
9:20-27, 19:4-11; Deuteronomy 23:17-18; Judges 19: 22-25; I Kings 14:24;
15:12; 22:46; II Kings 23:7; Job 36:14; Ezekiel 16:50 (possibly too
18:12 and 33:36); Jude 7; II Peter 2:7; Revelation 21:8; and 22:15.135
As R. A. Starbuck says, "Scripture speaks with one voice that homosexual
practice is sinful and beyond the scope of God's will for his children,
or to quote F. Dale Bruner, 'homosexual practice is not the design of
God's creation, is abhorred by God's Law, and is proscribed in God's
Gospel.'"136 Only towering cynicism can pretend that there is any
doubt about what the Scriptures say about homosexuality, writes Michael
Ukleja.137 ...The Scriptures throughout in a variety of cultural and
historical contexts spanning some 1,500 years, teach uniformly that
homosexuality is contrary to the divine will.138 As Dr. Stanton L.
Jones has stated, The only way to neutralize the biblical witness
against homosexual behavior is either grossly to misrepresent the Bible
or to undermine its authority."139
Remember what Christ taught about the Bible. After His resurrection He
rebuked His disciples as foolish and slow of heart to believe all
that the prophets have spoken [Luke 24:25, emphasis ours]. He told the
Jews Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). As He prayed to His
Father for His disciples He said, Sanctify them in the truth; your word
is truth (John 17:17).
WHAT ABOUT GAY CHURCHES?
But, you may say, arent there gay churches? There are. As Leanne
Payne warns, "We live in an age that reconciles good and evil.... This
is what makes the plight of homosexuals so treacherous. They live in a
time when even the church has received into itself a false light, a
false compassion that is as cruel as death. And rather than being
empowered by a holy God to call the sinner to repentance and then heal
the needy soul, the church at large babbles on in the language of a lost
society."140 Bishop Joseph Hall has written, False prophets care only
to please...141 They tell you to do whatever you feel like doing while
the Gospel tells you to do whatever God says.

Didnt Christ Himself charge us to enter by the narrow gate. For the
gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those
who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard
that leads to life, and those who find it are few and then solemnly
warn us to beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheeps
clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves [Matthew 7:13-15)?

Didnt the apostle Peter warn against false teachers who indulge in the
lust of defiling passion and will be destroyed, who have eyes full
of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unstable souls...by sensual
passions of the flesh, promising freedom while they themselves are
slaves of corruption. For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is
enslaved (II Peter 2:1,10,12,14,18-19).

You may ask, How can I tell those who teach truth from those who teach
error? Christ Himself told us, when, praying to the Father, he said,
Your Word is truth (John 17:17). The Bible is Gods roadmap, and you
cant go wrong following it.

Think about what Andrew Comiskey found. He still struggled with
homosexual feelings after Christ had drawn him to Himself when, at
university he met pro-gay representatives from almost every Christian
denomination. I heard dramatic testimonies from several who professed a
kind of born again experience upon coming out of their Christian
closets and into homosexuality. I met a wonderful woman from the gay
church... I even attended a couple of services at her church. Their
testimonies moved methe wilderness experiences of seeking Jesus in
powerless and ignorant religious climates, wanting deliverance but
finding none, then leaping to the conclusion that Jesus must want to
bless their homosexuality.

Not only did their experiences move me, but they also tempted me. How
great! I thought. The blessings of faith combined with the strong arms
of a male lover. The prospect had a powerful appeal, for although
Christian life was improving, I still longed for tangible, masculine
love. But something struck me in their stories that seemed inherently
alien to the gospel. Little, if any, glory was given to the transforming
power of Jesus. I drew on my limited knowledge of Jesus and how He
called people to Himself; He demanded they submit to Him all that they
were, so that He might reorient their personhood and purpose.

In contrast, these pro-gay Christians were expressing more of the glory
of their gayness than the honor of Jesus. Their homosexuality was no
longer submitted to His scrutiny but held fast as a kind of personal
right. In short, I intuited a profound lack of inspiration in their
faith. However wounded by the church and sincere in trying to heal the
pain, these pilgrims were not anointed. I left that group...142

There are churches that will tell you to do whatever you feel like doing
and there are churches that will tell you the truththat if you want
Christ and the abundant life He offers you must follow His directions:
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his
cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it (Mark
8:34,35).

I understand that it will be difficult for you. It is for everyone. It
may help you to think about this prayer written by a great Christian who
also found it difficult, A. W. Tozer: Father, I want to know You, but
my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them
without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from You the terror of
the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart
all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a
very part of my living self, so that You may enter and dwell there
without a rival.... Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine
in it, for You will be the light of it, and there shall be no night
there. In Jesus Name, Amen.143

A man once came to Christ desperately needing help. Jesus told him that
all things were possible for the one who believes. The man immediately
cried, I believe; help my unbelief! (Mark 9:34). Christ met his need.
Copy that mans resolution. Refuse to be denied. Pray with the fervency
and determination of Jacob who cried, I will not let you go unless you
bless me (Genesis 32:26). That kind of faith is never denied.

PART II

THE ROAD TO FREEDOM FROM HOMOSEXUALITY

CHAPTER 7

Dont let your feelings stop you from thinking!

Some people ask, If homosexuality is as hurtful as you say it is, why do so many people continue in it?

Of course no one answer will fit everyone, but here are several you might want to think about.

Many seek a softer, easier way.

Remember the warning of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. Enter by the
narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to
destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow
and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few
(Matthew 7:13,14). As someone has said, The crowds not going to
heaven! The same Savior who said, God so loved the world that he gave
his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life (John 3:16) also said, Whoever loves his life loses it,
and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am there will my
servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him (John
12:25,26). He said, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life
will lose it: but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it
(Matthew 16:24,25). Most people, whether heterosexually inclined or
homosexually inclined, are not willing to live this kind of lifeand it
is the only Christian life there is.

Please dont let these words frighten you. When the disciples heard them
they said, Who then can be saved? But Jesus looked at them and said,
With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible
(Matthew 19:25,26). As D. L. Moody wrote, "I prayed for faith and
thought that some day faith would come down and strike me like
lightening. But faith did not seem to come. One day I read in the tenth
chapter of Romans, 'Now faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word
of God.' I had closed my Bible and prayed for faith. I now opened my
Bible and began to study, and faith has been growing ever since."144
Ask God for faith. Read the Bible. Study the Bible. Meditate on the
Bible. Go faithfully to a church where the Bible is believed,
reverenced, loved, taught and preached. Saturate your soul with prayer
and Scripturefaith will come and bring that abundant life with it.

Some are already ensnared by addiction.

Then again, do you remember our talk concerning addiction? To get an
idea of addictions power, consider the story of William H. Crisman, a
Roman Catholic priest who was addicted to alcohol and drugs. He writes,
From the time I was nineteen until I was thirty-eight, the continuing,
daily, ordinary, unifying thread to my life was chemical dependency.
Those nineteen years began with a psychiatrists prescription for Valium
and petered out on the dregs of a vodka bottle.... Starkly put, I could
not do my life without my chemicals.145

Quite a while before I quit drinking and drugging, my head told me that
the chemicals were killing me. I rationally understood that objective
truth. But my far more profound level of perceptionmy guttold me that I
had to have them or Id die. I believed my gut....

All of that wasnt necessarily conscious or thought out, but on that
core level of intuition and adrenaline that guards our very survival, it
seemed obvious and was completely persuasive. My life was
disintegrating around me, but my use of alcohol and drugs was not, could
not be, why....

Note the paradox. In plain fact, the use of booze and drugs was killing
me; or rather, I was killing myself in slow motion by using them. But
even though I could rationally see that fact, I could not believe it
because my gut told me that my survival depended on continuing to use
the stuff. And the more dependent I became, the more I believed my
gut.146

What kept me convinced with granite like stubbornness that I needed my
drugs and alcohol to live, even as they were killing me?... Denial.

You see, habitual denial is not just a symptomor even the identifying
and presenting symptomof... addiction. Rather, its the very bedrock,
the foundation, the channeled riverbed of belief without
which...dependency cannot exist.147

Some say, Youre talking about substance abuse and we are talking about homosexuality. Arent they different?

They are, and yet please remember our talk about sexual addiction. A
sexual addict gets hooked on his own body chemistryon the adrenaline
rush of arousal and the endorphins that are released at such timesjust
as a drug addict gets hooked on cocaine.

I was a sexual addict.

My own story brings me feelings of intense shame. That is always
painfulbut I want to share it with you hoping it will help you choose
wisely as you consider what to do with your same-sex attractions.

My father, the adult child of an alcoholic, wanted me, his firstborn, to
be exactly like he wasstrong, tough, a fighter, and a medical doctor.
These were things God had not equipped me to be.

I remember desperately wanting him to be proud of me. Once when I was
seven years old the family went to a fair. They had a boxing ring into
which they put any kids who wanted to slug it out. Heres my chance, I
thought. There was, however, a problem. No one had taught me how to
fight. The other kid knew what he was doing and beat the tar out of me. I
couldnt even defend myself. All I did was cry. I can still hear the
shame in my fathers voice as he told me to stop crying. I was being a
baby.

As for being a doctor, for some reason I have always been extremely
sensitive to other peoples pain. While that helped me be a good friend
and counselor, it did not fit me to be a medical doctor. When I was a
sophomore in college, our biology lab instructor decided to dissect a
live frog in front of the class so we could see its beating heart, etc.
We had dissected dead frogs, and that had been no problem for me, but,
as we all crowded around the table and he pressed the knife into the
base of the frogs neck, the frogs legs shot straight out as if from a
jolt of pain. I fainted dead away in front of the whole class! Obviously
God had not designed me to be a doctor! Yet my father always told me,
even the last time I saw him before he died, how disappointed he was in
me that I had not become a doctor.

So I grew up feeling I was not what my father wanted and that he did
not love me. I put up a wall between us which resulted in my missing the
love I needed from my father to develop a healthy gender identity.

I first became aware of homosexual feelings when I was twelve, but I hid
them from everyone except for two male friends with whom I was sexually
involved during my teen years. At eighteen I became a Christian, and
that stopped all outward homosexual activity for over twenty years. It
did not, however, end the inner struggle. Neither did intense religious
activity or marriage and children.

Temptation continued until a time in my late thirties when, experiencing
great pain, I felt I could no longer fight my feelings. I gave in to
them. Once I yielded, I could not stop acting out no matter how
necessary to my own well-being or how hard I tried.

I was a pastor in a small town. Once, when one of the people I was
involved with threatened to expose me, I determined to summon all my
strength, seek God with all my heart, and stop. To continue in
homosexual activity was to risk my reputation, my job, my family, my
very sanity! I fasted, I prayed, yet I went crawling back to the very
same person in less than two weeks!

The result was blackmail, exposure, the loss of family, reputation, job,
and an attempted suicide. How can one explain all that except in terms
of addictionwhich the Bible calls bondage and slavery?

Fortunately a friend told me about Homosexuals Anonymous and I found
support and answers there as I worked their fourteen-step program. I
went to a Bible-believing Church which, while holding the Bibles
teaching that homosexual behavior is wrong, did not treat it as somehow
worse than any other sin, but warmly encouraged me in my recovery. I
drew near to God, found good counseling, and God graciously set me free.

Of course there are people who do not want out of homosexuality for the
same reason that there are people who do not want out of drug addiction
or alcoholismtheyre hooked and have become so enslaved that they not
longer even desire to be free. Stephen Arterburn, the founder and
chairman of New Life Clinics, the largest provider of Christian
counseling and treatment throughout the United States and Canada, puts
it this way. I know sex addicts who have refused healing. They knew
they were sick. They knew they had destroyed their character, respect,
marriages, jobs, relationships with God, and even their health. They
knew all of that, but they chose to stick with being sick. They refused
to make the choices that recovering sex addicts make when they decide
they want to be healed and be well. The intensity and disconnection of
the addiction remained a stronger lure than the hope of authentic
intimacy and a loving relationship, so they chose to stay sick.148

Some strugglers think they have no option.

Another reason people stay in homosexuality is ignorance. One young man
who has found freedom writes, I became disillusioned with gay life,
realizing that I was never going to find the one and live happily ever
after. Surprisingly, this truth was told to me numerous times by many
long-time life partners I knew. I knew them because they met me in
bars, at parties, or on the internet, and took me home to sleep with
them. I lived this way basically from age 16 to 21, miserable but truly
believing there was nothing else out there for me.149

Some have tried to be free on their own and failed.

Others stay in homosexuality out of despair. They have tried earnestly
to free themselves by themselves and found that they could not do so.
They reasoned falsely: Since I cannot get free on my own, try as I
might, I can never get free. The flaw in that reasoning stems from the
fact that homosexuality is a relational problem and can only be solved
through healthy, non-sexual, emotionally intimate relationships that
match what good family relationships should be. We have problems because
of flawed relationships; we can only get well in healthy ones. Harry
Stack Sullivan was a pioneer in what is called interpersonal psychology.
He used to tell his students, It takes people to make people sick, and
it takes people to make people well.150 We just must be certain that
we choose the right people with whom to have right relationships. Some
can make us worse; others can help us heal

Of course the really important question is not, Why do others remain in homosexuality? but What will you do with your life?

CHAPTER 8

Dont continue to be victimized!

As we will see in this chapter, homosexuality is an unhelpful response
to real and painful hurts. To surrender yourself to your homosexual
feelings is to allow whoever it was who victimized you to continue
controlling your life.

The strugglers dilemma.

To see what Im talking about, consider these thoughts by a man
wrestling with whether or not to seek freedom: ...If I am gay because I
was abused emotionally and physically by my dysfunctional alcoholic
family, do I want to be gay? If Im gay because I was pushed into it by
circumstance, I want to be what normal is. If it was not a free choice,
then I dont want it.151

Why?

As you can see, this man is thinking about an important questionone most of us have asked ourselves repeatedly. Why?

There is no real evidence the problem is biological.

First, there is no real evidence for the oft-repeated big lie that we
were born this way. Dr. William Byne, of the Department of Psychiatry of
the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons states,
...Recent genetic, hormonal and neuroanatomical evidence pertaining to
sexual orientation...is far from compelling. ...Reports that
homosexuality tends to run in families and that identical twins are more
likely to share the same sexual orientation than are fraternal
twins....are absolutely useless... Protestantism runs in families too,
but no one would suggest it is genetic.... The tenacity with which these
researchers hold to their hypothesis in the face of the overwhelming
evidence against it suggests that it is something other than science
that is operating here.152

The idea that we were born gay or that God made us gay brings
despair, not joy and freedom. I spoke to the mother of a young man who
struggled with unwanted same-sex attractions. She knew nothing of his
problem. He went to a therapist who told him there was no hope for
change (keep reading and youll see how false that is) and that he had
to learn to live with his homosexuality. He went home and attempted
suicide. That was how his mother learned of his pain.

If you are still troubled by the propaganda that is constantly being
pushed at us and feel you need more information than I can give in this
short book, let me suggest you read the following books which thoroughly
refute the notion that we were born gay and are doomed to remain so.
Dr. Neil Whitehead, a research scientist with a Ph.D. in biochemistry
has written the book, My Genes Made Me Do It: A Scientific Look at
Sexual Orientation with the help of his wife Blair; and Dr. Jeffrey
Satinover, a Jewish psychiatrist with degrees from M.I.T., Harvard
University, and the University of Texas, and who has been a Fellow in
Psychiatry at Yale University and past William James Lecturer in
Psychology and religion at Harvard, has written Homosexuality and the
Politics of Truth. These books will put your heart at rest and encourage
you to find freedom from homosexuality, if you decide that is what you
want.

There is a great deal of evidence that the problem is emotional.

If our problem is not the way we were born, what is it? Dr. Elizabeth
Moberly, a brilliant research psychologist who received her Ph.D. from
Oxford University, has done the most important research to date into the
causes and healing of the homosexual condition. On the basis of that
research she states, "...A homosexual orientation does not depend on a
genetic predisposition, hormonal imbalance, or abnormal learning
processes, but on difficulties in the parent-child relationship,
especially in the early years of life."153

Problems with ones same-sex parent.

While the Scriptures make it clear that all humankind struggles with sin
because, as fallen creatures, we have turned away from God, when one
asks why a particular sin is a problem for some and not for others, we
must consider environmental and psychological factors. Dr. Moberly's
research revealed "...one constant underlying principle...: that the
homosexualwhether man or womanhas suffered from some deficit in the
relationship with the parent of the same sex...154 "The parent may or
may not be culpable, but in either case the child has been genuinely
hurt. The difficulty arises when such hurt is accompanied by an
unwillingness to relate any longer to the love-source that has been
experienced as hurtful.... The tragedy is that subsequent to this effect
the behavior of the same-sex parent becomes irrelevant, since the child
is no longer able to relate normally to him or her. Even if love is
offered, it cannot be received.155 "...The homosexual condition is
itself a deficit in the child's ability to relate to the parent of the
same sex which is carried over to members of the same sex in
general.156 The result is that "needs for love, dependency and
identification which are normally met through the medium of such an
attachment, remain unmet.157

Early sexual trauma.

Further, some people detach because of sexual trauma. Dr. Robert Hicks
states, "...In counseling gay men for twenty years, I have not had one
yet whom I would say had a normative childhood or normative adolescent
development in the sexual arena. More often than not I have found
stories of abusive, alcoholic, or absent (physically and emotionally)
fathers: stories of incest or first experiences in sex forced upon them
by older brothers, neighborhood men, or even friends. I sometimes find
these men have had early exposure to pornography, along with devastating
experiences with the opposite sex wherein they were accused of
violation, or were utterly rejected or refused sexually. I agree with
Leanne Payne that most of the gay issues are, in fact, major identity
issues that are the result of traumatic experiences that have created
significant amounts of grief and loss in the gay's personhood.... For
men, their masculinity was stolen, so they go looking for it in other
men..."158

Dr. David Finkelhor found, "Boys victimized by older men were over four
times more likely to be currently engaged in homosexual activity than
were non-victims...159 He reasoned, "It may be common for a boy who has
been involved in an experience with an older man to label himself as
homosexual (1) because he has had a homosexual experience and (2)
because he was found to be sexually attractive by a man. Once he labels
himself homosexual, the boy may begin to behave consistently with the
role and gravitate toward homosexual activity."160

Drs. Robert L. Johnson and Diane K. Shrier reported on "a six year
experience in an adolescent medicine clinic in which all medical
interviews of adolescent males included questions about sexual
molestation. Forty adolescent males reported sexual victimization during
their preadolescent years. This study group of forty was compared to a
randomly selected age-matched group whose responses were negative to the
same questions."161 Those who had been molested "identified themselves
as currently homosexual nearly seven times as often and bisexual nearly
six times as often" as those who had not been molested.162

Dr. Ralph H. Gundlach, in a study of forty-eight lesbians compared with
thirty heterosexual women, all of whom had been the object of rape or
attempted rape, writes, "The most striking fact was that of 17 women
molested in their childhood (ages 4 to 15) by a relative or close family
friend, 16 became homosexuals.... For women 16 years old and older who
were raped, the proportion of homosexuals to heterosexuals is about the
same."163

Poor peer relationships in childhood.

Others detach because of painful experiences with their peers. Dr.
Richard P. Fitzgibbons states, The most common conflicts at different
life stages that predispose individuals to homosexual attractions and
behavior are loneliness and sadness, mistrust and fear, profound
feelings of inadequacy and a lack of self-acceptance.... The most
frequently seen cause of sadness in the past leading to homosexual
attractions in males was the result of childhood and adolescent
rejection by peers because of very limited athletic abilities.... The
craving for acceptance and love from peers results in strong emotional
attractions to those of the same sex, which leads many youngsters to
think they may be homosexuals.164

Unmet needs dont just go away.

Whatever went wrong, unmet needs for love, security, and identity from
childhood do not just go away because one gets older. "...The repression
of the normal need for attachment has to contend, like every
repression, with the corresponding drive towards the undoing of the
repressionin this case, the drive towards the restoration of
attachment."165 "This reparative attempt is...the solution and not the
problem."166 "An attachment to the same sex is not wrong, indeed it is
precisely the right thing for meeting same-sex deficits. What is
improper is the eroticisation of the friendship.167 Homosexual
activity implies the eroticisation of deficits in growth that remain
outstanding, and this is fundamentally, a confusion of the emotional
needs of the non-adult with the physiological desires of the adult.168

From what has been said it might seem that resolving a homosexual
problem would simply be a matter of providing the love he or she did not
receive in childhood. Would that it were that simple. There is a
problem that makes it far more complicated and difficult.

Heres what makes recovery difficult.

Unresolved conflicts with ones same-sex parent and the anger and fear
which are the result of these conflicts make receiving the love one
needs to resolve his or her homosexual struggle very difficult. Not only
are there the unmet needs of childhood pulling one towards others of
the same sex, but there is the fear of being hurt again as well as the
anger at having been hurt which pulls the struggler in the opposite
direction.

As Dr. Moberly points out, ...The homosexual both runs from and seeks
for men, in consequence of and in order to resolve detachment from the
father.169 ...The homosexual condition is one of same-sex
ambivalence.... The overall structure of ambivalence involves various
distinct components. Firstly...the defensive detachment from the
same-sex parental love-source will be marked by hostility, whether overt
or latent, towards parental figures and towards other members of the
same sex.... At the same time, there is a reparative drive towards the
restoration of attachment and hence towards the meeting of unfulfilled
needs for love, dependency and identification.170 It is this same-sex
ambivalence which we...take to be the essence of the homosexual
condition in both the male and the female. The only difference would be
one of greater or lesser degree in individual cases.171

The road to addiction.

From this analysis it is easy to see how a homosexual person can easily
become a sexual addict. Dr. Patrick Carnes, a pioneer in the
understanding of addictive processes as they apply in sexuality, lists
four core beliefs that drive every sexual addict: 1. I am basically a
bad, unworthy person. 2. No one would love me as I am. 3. My needs are
never going to be met if I have to depend on others. 4. Sex is my most
important need.172 Feeling that unworthiness makes one unlovable, and
believing that unlovableness guarantees others will not want to meet his
or her needs, the addict looks to sex as the only hope of satisfaction.
But sexual acting out yields feelings of guilt and shame, increasing
the sense of unworthiness; the pain of guilt and shame leads to more
acting out to numb those feelings; this leads to more guilt and shame,
leading to more acting outon and on. Further, the addict finds that he
or she is doing things they thought they would never do to get the
temporary relief sought, thus increasing the guilt and shame. It takes
more and more to get less and less. This downward spiral must be broken
if one is to recover. The addict must find people with whom it is safe
to be open and honest, and then find the courage to be so. When others
do not consider him or her unworthy (though they do not approve of
everything done), do love knowing all, and do try to meet his or her
legitimate needs, the addict no longer sees sexual activity as the only
road to emotional fulfillment and the power of addiction is broken.

Resolving the problem.

Dr. Moberly writes, Just as the problem of homosexuality is twofold
there must be a twofold therapeutic goal. This twofold answer must be
the undoing of the defensive detachment, and making up for unmet
needs.173 The homosexual is not to stop loving members of the same
sex, but to meet his or her psychological needs deeply and completely
without sexual activity.174

All too often, people have tried to force opposite-sex contacts
prematurely. Dr. Moberly points out, Attempted heterosexual
relationships, or social contact with the opposite sex, are not the
solution to homosexuality, since increased opposite-sex contact can do
nothing to fulfill same-sex deficits.175 To stop being a homosexual
means to stop being a person with same-sex psychological deficits. This
can only happen through the fulfillment of such needs and the resolution
of any barriers to such fulfillment.176

What is needed for one to stop being a homosexual? Dr. Moberly states,
Love, both in prayer and in relationships, is the basic therapy. A
defensive detachment from the same-sex love source, and consequent unmet
needs for love, constitute the homosexual condition. Love is the basic
problem, the great need, and the only true solution. If we are willing
to seek and to mediate the healing and redeeming love of Christ, then
healing for the homosexual will become a great and glorious reality.177

There is no quick fix.

Dr. Moberly warns against looking for a quick-fix. ...It should be
borne in mind that the normal process of growth for a young child takes
the better part of the first two decades of life. Where unresolved
trauma has blocked the normal process of growth since the age of two or
three, it is quite unrealistic to expect this to be made up for in less
than a few years. The process may be somewhat accelerated by the
relative social maturity of the client, but it is bound to be lengthy.
Length combined with intensity make this a difficult therapeutic
proposition... But the task of reconstructing a human life can hardly be
less than demanding, and would undoubtedly be an immensely rewarding
enterprise.178

CHAPTER 9

Take Heart! Since others have found freedom, why not you?

You might be thinking, Wait just one minute! I hear you talking about
freedom from homosexuality and the healing of homosexuality. Are you
saying that changing not only ones behaviors but also changing ones
feelings is possible?

Yes, and before you close your mind, please let me share with you some scientific information you may not be familiar with.

A highly respected history of psychiatry, written before it was
politically correct to suppress such findings, states, "The fact that
one-fourth to one-half of all homosexuals who seek psychotherapeutic
treatment can effect a reversal of their sexual interests attests that
at least in these cases early psychogenic influences were most important
in the development of the condition.179

Dr. Arno Karlen

Noted researcher, Dr. Arno Karlen, says, "I have heard many clinical
psychologists say they take for granted that they will get complete
change in a third of their...[homosexual] patients and partial change in
another third."180

Dr. Ruben Fine

Dr. Reuben Fine, a highly respected Jewish psychoanalyst, who received
his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Southern
California, was one of the founding fathers and served as Director of
the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training, served as a Visiting
Professor at Adelphi University, founded the Division of Psychoanalysis
of the American Psychological Association (Division 39), and was
instrumental in the founding of the National Psychological Association
for Psychoanalysis and the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and
Research Center wrote, "I have recently had occasion to review the
results of psychotherapy with homosexuals, and been surprised by the
findings. It is paradoxical that even though the politically active
homosexual group denies the possibility of change, all studies from
Schrenck-Notzing on have found positive effects, virtually regardless of
the kind of treatment used...181 Thus, whether with hypnosis...,
psychoanalysis of any variety, educative psychotherapy, behavior
therapy, and/or simple educational procedures, a considerable percentage
of overt homosexuals became heterosexual. Of course, only the
psychoanalytic cases are really understood, since the others present no
dynamic picture. But it is striking that if the patients were motivated,
whatever procedure is adopted a large percentage will give up their
homosexuality. In this connection public information is of the greatest
importance. The misinformation spread by certain circles that
'homosexuality is untreatable by psychotherapy' does incalculable harm
to thousands of men and women.182

Dr. Gerard J. M. van den Aardweg

Dr. Gerard J. M. van den Aardweg received his Ph.D. in psychology from
the University of Amsterdam, has taught in universities in the
Netherlands and Brazil, and has more than twenty years experience in
research concerning homosexuality and its treatment.

He made the following observations from an extensive analysis of 101
homosexual persons he has treated. Of those who continued treatment 60
per cent of the total groupabout two-thirds reached at least a
satisfactory state of affairs for a long period of time. By this is
meant that the homosexual feelings had been reduced to occasional
impulses at most while the sexual orientation had turned predominantly
heterosexual, or that the homosexual feelings were completely absent,
with or without predominance of heterosexual interests. Of this group,
however, about one-third could be regarded as having been changed
'radically.' By this is meant that they did not have any more homosexual
interests but had normal heterosexual feelings...183

He acknowledged, "These results are still far from perfect, but...the
radically changed casesfrom complete homosexuality to normal
heterosexualityrefute the theory that therapy of homosexuality is
pointless. Indeed since relatively few homosexuals seriously try to
change and few therapists encourage them to do so, the notion that
homosexuality is irreversible is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If nobody
tries, nobody will succeed. ...Why would we take a fatalistic attitude
toward the possibilities of improvement of homosexuality when an
acceptable percentage improves substantially?184 He stated
emphatically, "...It is not true that a homosexual neurosis is
irremediable...185 No matter how much remains to be learned in this
field, it is evident however that people can and do recover from this
neurosis.186

He concluded, Working at oneself, let alone fighting ones undesirable,
self-centered habits and attachments is not a popular issue in our
permissive and overindulgent age.... The specious exhortation accept
yourself becomes....tantamount to surrender to immaturity on the one
hand and repression of ones better self on the other.... The
alternative, to work at yourself, is more difficult, but it is the only
way to inner happiness and peace of mind.187

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer

In October of 2003, a bombshell exploded on the
psychological/psychiatric world. That was the month that Dr. Robert L.
Spitzer, chief of the New York State Psychiatric Institutes Biometrics
Research Department, and professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University,
New York, published a paper in Archives of Sexual Behavior titled, Can
Some Gay Men and Lesbians Change Their Sexual Orientation? 200
Participants Reporting a Change from Homosexual to Heterosexual
Orientation. This study is fascinating for a number of reasons.

First, no one can accuse Dr. Spitzer of religious bias. He describes himself as a Jewish atheist.188

Second, no one can accuse Dr. Spitzer of anti-gay bias. He has been
described as the psychiatrist who led the team that deleted
homosexuality from the diagnostic manual [the official system for
classification of psychological and psychiatric disorders prepared by
and published by the American Psychiatric Association189] in
1973...190

Third, the story of how Dr. Spitzer came to do this study is important.
He attended an annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association
where it was being argued by the politically correct that reorientation
therapy should be banned. Dr. Spitzer had been convinced that sexual
orientation is unchangeable.191 ...I spoke to some ex-gays who were
picketing the meeting. They explained how they had changed. And that got
me interested.192

As a result Dr. Spitzer designed a study that involves systematically
interviewing a large group of individuals who report that their sexual
orientation had been predominantly homosexual, but who now report that
because of some kind of therapy they have sustained for a least 5 years
some change to a heterosexual orientation.193
He was able to recruit 200 individuals (143 males, 57 females) who had
experienced predominantly homosexual attraction for many years, and in
the year before starting therapy, at least 60 on a scale of sexual
attraction (where 0 = exclusively heterosexual and 100 = exclusively
heterosexual 194 Almost half of the participants (41%) had at some
time prior to the therapy been openly gay. Over a third of the
participants (males 37%, females 35%) reported that they had serious
thoughts of suicide, related to their homosexuality.195
Dr. Spitzer noted that the most commonly reported reasons for seeking
to change were that the individual did not find life as a gay man or
lesbian emotionally satisfying (males, 85%; females, 70%...), conflict
between their same sex feelings and behavior and the tenets of their
religion (79%), and desire to get married or stay married (males, 67%;
females 35%...).196
Although all of the participants had been sexually attracted to
members of the same sex, a small proportion had never engaged in
consensual homosexual sex (males, 13%; females, 4%...). Significantly
more males than females had engaged in consensual homosexual sex with
more than 50 different sexual partners during their lifetime (males 34%;
females 2%...). Significantly more males than females had not
experienced consensual heterosexual sex before the therapy effort
(males, 53%; females, 33%...)197
Dr. Spitzers subjects were asked about their same-sex attraction,
sexual orientation identity, same-sex lustful thoughts, yearning for
romantic emotional intimacy, same-sex masturbatory fantasies, same-sex
thoughts during heterosexual sex, gay pornography, homosexual behavior,
and being bothered by homosexual feelings in the 12 months prior (PRE)
to the effort to change and the 12 months prior to the interview (POST).
What was the outcome?
First, Dr. Spitzer found that typically the effort to change did not
produce significant results for the first two years. Subjects said they
were helped by examining their family and childhood experiences, and
understanding how those factors might have contributed to their gender
identity and sexual orientation. Same-sex mentoring relationships,
behavior therapy techniques and group therapy were also mentioned as
particularly helpful.198
But many of those who persevered found what they had been seeking. To
the researchers surprise, good heterosexual functioning was reportedly
achieved by 67% of the men who had rarely or never felt any opposite-sex
attraction before the change process. Nearly all the subjects said they
now feel more masculine (in the case of men) or more feminine
(women).199
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Spitzer concluded, some highly
motivated individuals, using a variety of change efforts, can make
substantial change in multiple indicators of sexual orientation, and
achieve good heterosexual functioning.200
He added that change from homosexual to heterosexual is not usually a
matter of either/or but exists on a continuumthat is, a diminishing
of homosexuality and an expansion of heterosexual potential...201

The great majority (90%) of the participants reported using more than
one type of therapy. Almost half (47%) reported that seeing a mental
health professional was the only or most helpful kind of therapy....
About a third (34%) of the participants reported that the only or most
helpful type of therapy involved attending an ex-gay or other religious
support group.202

Participants were also asked, How did you translate what you learned
into actually changing your feelings? Often mentioned were linking
childhood or family experience to the development of their sexual
feelings, having nonsexual relationships with individuals of the same
sex (often in the context of an ex-gay support group), thought stopping
(e.g., When I got such thoughts, I didnt go down that route) avoiding
tempting situations, and gradually falling in love with a member of
the opposite sex.203

And how did all this work out in terms of marital satisfaction? Dr.
Spitzer sent the married couples the Dyadic Adjustment Scale that
measures marital satisfaction and found that the instruments Overall
Adjustment Scale was not significantly different from the instruments
normative group... On average, participants reported the same degree of
marital adjustment as the instruments normative reference group.204

He noted, Depression has been reported to be a common side effect of
unsuccessful attempts to change sexual orientation. This was not the
case for our participants, who often reported that they were markedly
or extremely depressed at PRE (males 43%, females 47%) but rarely that
depressed at POST (males 1%, females 4%). To the contrary at POST the
vast majority reported that they were not at all or only slightly
depressed (males 91%, females 88%).205

What was Dr. Spitzers conclusion? Although initially skeptical, in the
course of the study, the author became convinced of the possibility of
change in some gay men and lesbians.206 ...It surprised me how
convincing the accounts were.... From the very first people that I
talked to, I had the feeling they were talking about something real.207

I know youve heard that change is impossible. In the time we have had
together, Ive only been able to give you a small portion of the
evidence available showing that change is possible. You can see more, if
you wish, by ordering Once Gay...Always Gay??? listed on page 1 of the
HA Book Ministry List.

Dr. Stanton Jones

I think youve seen enough to give you hope and to enable you to see why
Dr. Stanton Jones, Chair of Psychology at Wheaton College, has written:
Anyone who says there is no hope is either ignorant or a liar. Every
secular study of change has shown some success rate, and persons who
testify to substantial healings by God are legion.208

CONCLUSION

As our time together draws to a close, let me share a true story that
illustrates and summarizes why I have been encouraging you to seek
freedom from homosexuality.

Joe was a pastor, a gifted counselor, and a man who struggled with
homosexuality. The man who spoke from the pulpit Sunday morning often
spent most of Saturday night in a gay bar cruising for a sexual contact.

Why? When Joe was six, an older man sexually abused him. As a result, he
felt different from other boys. They frightened him. In high school he
began having frequent sexual encounters with other males.

A deep longing to please God and make up for these desires led him to
study for the ministry. Looking for a cure, he married. The early
years were happy as he and his wife raised their two children. But the
desires did not go away. They had merely been repressed. Eventually they
came back. Joe fought these temptations but times of stress seemed to
drive him to a sexual encounter. He would repent but later go through
the whole cycle again and again.

He asked God to take the feelings away thousands of times. He tried to
bury them in his work and family. He went to the altar at church. He
fasted and prayed. He did everything he knew to do, but the struggles
continued. There seemed to be no way out.

Convinced there was no hope, Joe decided he would not live a lie any
longer. He felt he was on his way to hell, so it didnt matter what he
did. Leaving his wife, children, and church, he began living an openly
gay life. During the day he worked at any job he could find. At night he
went to the bars. He said, It was a completely selfish
lifepromiscuous sex, alcohol, hard drugs. My total preoccupation was
with being gay.

Looking for friends, he went to a homosexual church where he was
welcomed with open arms. At first I felt a tremendous relief and it
felt really good to be accepted, but the good feelings didnt last long
and a lot of problems emerged. I kept having to deal with broken
relationships. I got put in jail. I went to a psychologist. I became
suicidal. I tried to kill myself three times.

He relocated, got a job as a florist, and moved in with a man who became
his lover. This relationship, however, became a nightmare. The man
turned out to be seriously disturbed and violent. By the time Joe
realized what he had gotten into, he was trapped.

The man was irrationally jealous. One night he and Joe had an argument
which ended in Joe being viciously beaten, lying in a bed soaked with
my blood, having had two objects broken over my heada wooden sculpture
and a large glass ashtrayI was being slapped and punched by my lover
who spat out these words: You are being punished for the life you have
lived 

Joe was beaten so badly that blood was everywhere. He took it
helplessly, expecting to die. He felt he had no right to call out to God
because he had brought this on himself.

It was only the beginning. For the next five months the man literally
imprisoned him. In a desire to totally possess Joe, he got him fired
from his job and forbade him to leave the house, make phone calls, or
get the mail. If Joe moved an object in the house while he was gone, the
man would accuse him of having brought in a rival lover. He forced Joe
to do whatever he wanted with threats of violence.

Fear paralyzed Joe. Escape seemed impossible. He was numb from the pain,
shame, and horror of the situation. His lover worked only two blocks
from the house and threatened Joe with death if he tried to run away.

All I did was cook and clean house. I because an avid fan of soap
operasand of the 700 Club. Joe spent half the time cursing the hosts
in cynical rebellion and the other half crying and hoping that something
on the show would get through to him.

He began secretly reading the Psalms and praying that God would get him
out of the situation. After six months, there was another argument and
another beating. This time one of Joes ribs was cracked. He was
expected to endure the pain as proof of his love.

Joe decided the only way out was to kill himself. He took a long carving
knife from the kitchen and held it just below his ribcage. Before he
could thrust the knife into his body, the story of the prodigal son
started to play through his mind as though he was watching a movie. For
the first time he felt a deep sense of the love of God. He dropped the
knife, sobbed, and turned on the 700 Club, which that day featured the
testimony of a man who had found freedom from homosexuality.

That did it. Joe called the 700 Club and asked a counselor to pray that
he could escape alive. He threw a few possessions into a suitcase and
waited on the street corner for a cab, petrified that his lover would
see him. He went to the bus station and caught the first bus out of
town. Three days later he was home, not knowing how he was going to give
up homosexuality, but certain that he wanted God more than anything.

God led Joe to Homosexuals Anonymous and he committed himself to working
its 14 Step program. Reading and sharing helped him with emotional and
spiritual growth. He got involved in a Bible-believing church. He
attended weekly counseling sessions where he learned that the deepest
roots of homosexuality are not sexual, but arise from unmet love needs,
that the condition itself was not sin, but that indulgence in homosexual
activity was.

When Joe learned he was not born a homosexual, that the condition was a
result of early influences and choices, something exciting happened. As
he forgave those who had hurt him, he experienced tremendous release.
The strength of the homosexual desires significantly lessened and Joe
could describe himself as delivered from homosexuality.

We all love a happy ending, but Joes story does not have an entirely
happy one. Joe had already contracted the HIV virus and later developed
full-blown AIDS. After a difficult period of illness, Joe succumbed and
went home to be with the Lord.

As you think about Joes story and the things weve talked about, you
may be tempted to say, The question of whether or not to seek freedom
from homosexuality is a no-brainer! Who wouldnt seek to be free from
something that will destroy your fellowship with God in time and
eternity; destroy your chances for true love and lead to a lonely old
age with no one to want you; can lead to sexual addiction which will
progress from one terrible bondage to another; puts you at risk for
physical attack and sexually transmitted diseases, some of which (like
AIDS) are fatal; results in significantly higher rates of depression,
substance abuse (drugs and alcohol), and attempted suicide; and is the
result of unhealed wounds from childhood which can wreck ones life if
not recognized and dealt with?

The problem of the deceitfulness of sin.

Youre right, of course. But its not quite that simple. Were not
always rational beings. We often deceive ourselves. That is why the
Bible warns of the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). As Dr. Philip
Edgecumbe Hughes notes, Sin...is a constantly present reality which
makes its inroads by means of deceitfulness. Sin first deceives and
then hardens, leaving its victims in an irretrievably hopeless
position...209 William Gouge warns, All the devices of sin are as fair
baits whereby dangerous hooks are covered over to entice silly fish to
snap at them, so as they are taken and made a prey to the fisher.210

How does sin deceive us?

How does sin deceive? In the Bible, James tells us, Let no one say when
he is tempted, I am tempted of God. for God cannot be tempted with
evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he
is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has
conceived gives birth to, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth
death (James 1:13-15).

Sin begins its tempting us to avoid the hard work of recovery by
suggesting that we blame God for our struggles. William Barclay writes,
From the beginning of time it has been man's first instinct to blame
others for his own sin. The ancient writer who wrote the story of the
first sin in the Garden of Eden was a first-rate psychologist with a
deep knowledge of the human heart. When God challenged Adam with his
sin, Adam's reply was, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she
gave me of the tree, and I ate. And when God challenged Eve with her
action, her answer was, The serpent beguiled me, and I ate. Adam said,
Don't blame me; blame Eve. Eve said, Don't blame me; blame the
serpent (Genesis 3:12-13). Man has always been an expert in evasion....
Men blame their fellows, they blame their circumstances, they blame the
way in which they are made, for the sin of which they are guilty.211

James rebukes such nonsense and places the blame right where it belongs,
on our own lust! As Thomas Manton put it, "Sin knoweth no mother but
your own hearts"212 Bernard of Clairvaux said, "Everyone is Satan to
Himself."213

Note the five steps to destruction in James 1:13-15. (1) The mind is
dragged away from God and truth by lust. (2) The affections are enticed
by lust. The mind is fascinated. The desires are inflamed. The dangers
are hidden. (3) Next the will consents to lust and conceives sin. (4)
Finally sin is born in ones thoughts and/or actions. (5) Sin grows,
and, when full-grown, destroys!

What are you preparing yourself for?

C. S. Lewis wrote: People often think of Christian morality as a kind
of bargain in which God says, If you keep a lot of rules Ill reward
you, and if you dont Ill do the other thing. I do not think that is
the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time
you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of
you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was
before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable
choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing
either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a
creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and
with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with
God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind
of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and
power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence,
and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to one
state of the other.214

And to end my life, with my back turned toward the God who created me,
embracing sin, is to die eternally! To see how Satan uses our lust to
destroy us, consider how an Eskimo destroys a wolf. When an Eskimo wants
to kill a wolf, he coats his knife blade repeatedly with blood allowing
it to freeze until the blade is concealed by a substantial thickness of
frozen blood. Then the knife is buried in the frozen ground with the
blade up. The marauding wolf follows his sensitive nose to the scent and
tastes the fresh-frozen bloodand licks itmore and more vigorously
until the keen edge is bare. Feverishly now he licks harder in the
arctic night. So great becomes his craving for blood that he does not
notice the razor sharp sting of the naked blade on his own tonguenor
does he recognize the instant at which his insatiable thirst is being
satisfied by his own warm blood! More!! His carnivorous appetite craves
more!until the dawn finds him dead in the snow.

And so, as you see, you must choose. It is a matter of life and death.
Will you surrender to our Lord as best you can, or, will you live for
your lusts? Lust is strong in everyone. Because it is so powerful, a
choice that looks like a no-brainer, considered rationally, can be
extremely difficult. Yet it is a choice which all must make whether they
struggle with heterosexual lust, homosexual lust, greed, anger, pride,
the lust for power, selfishness, or any of a thousand other sins which
crave to be our masters.

What will you choose? Understand that you will have to renew this choice
every day, as do all Christians. As C. S. Lewis wrote, Relying on God
has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been
done.215

Dont be discouraged if you do not succeed quickly. Lewis also wrote,
We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastitylike perfect charitywill
not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask God for help.
Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no
help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each
failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often
what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this
power of always trying again. For however important chastity (or
courage, or truthfulness, or any other virtue) may be, this process
trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures
our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We
learn, on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best
moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst,
for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down
content with anything less than perfection.216

And please dont let fear of the battles ahead overwhelm you. You only
have to live one day at a time and fight one battle at a time. As A. B.
Simpson put it, A little clock which had just been finished by the
maker was put on a shelf in his wareroom between two older clocks who
were busy ticking away the noisy seconds. Well, said one of the clocks
to the newcomer. So you've started on this task. I am sorry for you;
you're ticking bravely now, but you'll be tired enough before you get
through thirty-three million ticks. Thirty-three million ticks! said
the frightened clock. 'Why I never could do that!' And it stood still
instantly with despair. 'Why, you silly thing, said the other clock...
'Why do you listen to such words? It's nothing of the kind. You've only
got to make one tick this moment. There now, isn't that easy? And now
another and that is just as easy, and so right along. Oh, if that's
all, cried the new clock, that's easily done, so here I go. And it
started bravely on again, making a tick a moment and not counting the
months and the millions. But at the year's end, it had made thirty-three
million vibrations without knowing it. Oh, if...(we) would only live by
the moment, not the year!... Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof, said the Lord. And as thy days, so shall thy strength be is
the promise which four thousand years have not exhausted."217

Finally, you dont have to recover all by yourself or with just you and
God (as a matter of fact, I found that to try to do that was to
virtually guarantee failure). Here are some places where you can find
good help:

Homosexuals Anonymous

I found help through Homosexuals Anonymous, A Christian ministry that I
urge you to contact: HA, PO Box 7881, Reading, PA 19603-7881, (610)
779-2500, Webpage: ha-fs.org

If you ask for information, everything they send will come in a plain
envelope with no mention of homosexuality of Homosexuals Anonymous on
the outside.

If you are looking for professional (sometimes secular) counseling by
people who believe in change you might wish to contact: NARTH, 16633
Ventura Blvd. Ste. 1340, Encino, CA 91436-1801, (818) 789-6452

Dont worry about where these offices are located as each may be able to
refer you to help closer to home. Call whoever seems most likely to you
to be able to offer you help. If those you try first dont seem to work
out, keep trying.

Whatever you do, please get help and get free! As the Bible says, ...I
have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose
life... [Deuteronomy 30:19]. As I live declares the Lord God, I have
no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from
his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will
you die ? (Ezekiel 33:11) Please, choose life!

The headline of Jay Michaelson's article (Nov.11, 2005) in the Forum section of the Forward newspaper states: "Disabuse Community of Intolerance". Michaelson, who is the Director of Nehirim: A Spiritual Initiative for GLBT Jews, makes his case that "What causes scandals isn't homosexuality, but its repression." The article discusses several rabbis who have been charged with being involved with teenage boys and blames part of this problem on the Jewish community which has kept gay men in the closet, going as far as to say "we create the very monsters about whom we later profess shock".

Quite a charge which I would think should have been backed up by hard statistics and studies showing the truth of Michaelson's contentions that where homosexuality isn't kept in the closet, gay men live normal, happy lives. Further on in this article, I will give instances where gay men are not kept in the closet ( San Francisco and Holland ) and the results do not back up Michaelson's reasoning - in fact they make his claims sound like wishful thinking.

I can understand why Michaelson wishes his claims to be true. He indicates he suffered greatly when he was in the closet and I believe him. However, his belief that coming out of the closet and joining the gay world is what we should be recommending to men and women who feel SSA is one I contest strongly and will try to show is misguided at best.

Among his many points, Michaelson tells us that coming out "enables gay people to be as healthy and loving as everyone else." Rebutting each of Michaelson's claims would take a book, so I will focus on two of his most egregious statements:

- "We need to stop demonizing what is natural, healthy and good"

- "Of course you would do everything you could to somehow "make yourself straight":

. . . maybe even the thoroughly discredited, and completely ineffective, forms of

"reparative therapy" being peddled within the religious community"

First, let me be very clear what my position is as Co-Director of JONAH. JONAH, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, takes a middle of the road position in relation to homosexuality. We believe that demonizing those who feel same-sex attraction (SSA) is as damaging and unfair as normalizing homosexuality. Neither extreme is good for SSA men and women, their families or society.

JONAH's position is that homosexual feelings, thoughts, and desires are symptoms of underlying emotional issues. They represent a defensive response to conflicts in the present, a way to medicate pain and discomfort. SSA represents unresolved childhood trauma, archaic emotions, frozen feelings, wounds that never healed particularly in the realm of gender identity. SSA indicates there is an unconscious drive for bonding between a son and his father or between a daughter and her mother.

For the last few decades, gay rights activism has attempted to normalize homosexuality saying it is just a different form of sexuality that is equal to heterosexuality. Obviously when Michaelson tells us that homosexuality is natural, healthy and good, he is telling us that he believes people are born gay and unable to change from gay to straight so we should accept homosexuality as God-made, or occurring so early in a child's life that change is not possible. Is he right?

1. IS THERE ANY SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT PEOPLE ARE BORN GAY?

The quick and substantial answer to that question is NO. There are no reputable and reliable studies that show anyone is born gay. In fact, the few studies by male gay activist scientists that purported to show a genetic or biological link to homosexuality have all been debunked because they could not be replicated by other scientists. Here are the words of one of these gay scientists, Dr. Simon LeVay, who is frequently quoted by gay activists to prove their cause:

"It's important to stress what I didn't find. I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn't show that gay men are born that way, the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain. . ." ( David Nimmons:"Sex and the Brain," Discover Vol. 15, no.3 (March 1994), 64-71)

Another famous gay scientist, Dean Hamer, similarly discusses the findings of his 1993 study "A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X Chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation" reported in Science magazine, July 1993. Hamer's conclusion:

"These genes do not cause people to become homosexuals. . . the biology of personality is much more complicated than that." (Nicolosi, Reparative Therapy, 103-104)

One last author, Andrew Sullivan, deserves to be mentioned here because he is a brilliant and famous gay activist and one of the originators of the concept of gay marriage. Sullivan, who has AIDS, to his credit decided to review all the scientific literature pertaining to whether people are born gay and he wrote his findings in a book entitled "Love Undetectable" (1998). Sullivan's words reflect an honesty that I wish were shown by Michaelson:

". . . the complexity of the roots of homosexuality, the fact that it may be a condition both imposed upon and created by homosexuals themselves, means that it cannot simply be debated like the color of a person's hair. Gay people would doubtless like the hair analogy to be accurate, because it would enable them to avoid the wrenching and often painful self analysis they would otherwise have to embark upon. But, alas, it isn't. And pain is, still, an eluctable part of the examined homosexual life." (Pg 164)

As much as we commiserate with Michaelson in his desire to believe that people are born gay, or that a gay identity becomes fixed so early in childhood that you can't change, the evidence refutes his conclusions. Let's turn to Michaelson's next contention:

2. IS HOMOSEXUALITY "NATURAL, HEALTHY AND GOOD" AS STATED BY

MICHAELSON?

Just a brief review of the mind boggling statistics reflecting the mental and physical health of the gay community can make anyone question where Michaelson gets his idea that homosexuality is not only the equivalent of heterosexuality but is natural, healthy and good. Are there some gays who live normal, healthy lives both physically and emotionally? Absolutely. However, we can show that the number of gay men who suffer from damaging emotional and physical illnesses is much higher than in the heterosexual community no matter how the society they live in treats homosexuality. These statistics change little in gay-friendly cities like San Francisco or in gay-friendly countries like Holland.

Two well known statistics kept repeating in my mind as I read Michaelson's article:

- 20% of gay men have over 1,000 sexual partners in their lifetime

- 40% of gay men have over 500 partners in their lifetime.

What seems to Michaelson to be natural, healthy and good appears to me to be a life-long search for love that never materializes. Telling young men who feel SSA that their best choice is to come out early and enter the gay lifestyle to "find themselves" seems like a prescription for disaster.

In fact, the disease statistics in San Francisco appear to be higher than elsewhere in the country. Here are just a few examples: "HIV Rate Rising Among Gay Men in San Francisco," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2001; The Times reported that the rate of rectal gonorrhea among gay and bisexual men in San Francisco rose 44% during a recent three-year period, while in Los Angeles, new syphilis cases among gay and bisexual men rose more than 1,680%.

Looking at Holland, one of the most gay friendly countries in the world, should give us the best chance for Michaelson to prove his contention that if gays were able to be open and honest about their sexuality, they would lead normal lives. However, we find once again that Michaelson's contentions are not backed up by the facts. Here's the results of a comprehensive 2001 study as reported on www.narth.com:

Lifetime prevalence of DSM- III- R Psychiatric Disorders

Homosexual (SSA) Heterosexual

Mood disorders 39.0% 13.3%

Major depression 39.3% 10.9%

Anxiety disorders 31.7% 13.2%

One or more diagnoses 56.1% 41.4%

Two or more 37.8% 14.4%

Stanford et al. (2001) Arch Gen Psychiatry, Vol. 58.

Study from the Netherlands of 5, 898 adults of which 2.1% self-identified as homosexual.

3. IS REPARATIVE THERAPY THOROUGHLY DISCREDITED AND COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE AS STATED BY MICHAELSON?

Here, once again, we would have hoped that Michaelson backed up his beliefs with the facts as he knows them because there are dozens of studies showing that reparative therapy is successful for significant numbers of men. I will show a few of the results of a recent study conducted by Dr. Robert Spitzer at Columbia University. Spitzer's turn around on the issue of whether gays can change ( he originally thought change was not possible) has greatly angered gay activists because Spitzer was involved in the original 1973 decision of the American Psychiatric Association to take homosexuality out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders. Here are Spitzer's own words and then a brief review of his findings:

"Contrary to conventional wisdom, some highly motivated individuals, using a variety of change efforts, can make substantial change in multiple indicators of sexual orientation, and achieve good heterosexual functioning."

SPITZER STUDY:

The last of the 31 studies summarized by the "Homosexuality and the Possibility of Change" project was conducted by Columbia University psychiatrist Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, who studied "the self-reported experiences of individuals who claim to have achieved a change from homosexual to heterosexual attraction that has lasted at least five years." (This study was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in October 2003.) He located and interviewed 143 men and 57 women who had had a predominantly homosexual attraction for many years (defined as at least 60 on a 100-point scale of sexual attraction, where 0 is exclusively heterosexual and 100 is exclusively homosexual), and who, after therapy, had experienced a heterosexual shift of no less than 10 points, lasting at least 5 years.

Spitzer found that the average level of reported homosexual attraction among the 200 interviewees dropped from 90 (on a 100 point scale) in the 12 months before the change effort began to 19 in the 12 months just prior to the interview. Also:

Let's now turn to Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, one of the world's experts on the statistics of homosexuality, who wrote a book called "Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. In his book, Dr. Satinover discusses the results of reparative therapy vs. therapy for other kinds of issues. Here is what Dr. Satinover had to say:

"The record of purely secular "treatments" for homosexuality is far better than activists and the popular press would have us believe. But, in a parallel to AA, it is probably not as good as the record of these who approach the problem by attending to its spiritual roots as well. The fact that not all methods are successful, and that no method is successful for everyone, has been distorted by activists into the claim that no method is helpful for anyone. It is a tragedy that so many professionals have accepted this distortion. The simple truth is that, like most methods in psychiatry and psychotherapy, the treatment of homosexuality has evolved out of eighty years of clinical experience, demonstrating approximately the same degree of success as, for example, the psychotherapy of depression.

To set the record straight, most experts in the field of reparative therapy would agree that the following statistics are approximately correct, with some therapists showing even better results: Of those who come to reparative therapy feeling unhappy about their SSA, one third are able to comfortably regain their heterosexuality, one third make considerable improvement and feel better about themselves, one third make little change. Just think of how many millions of SSA men and women in the world could regain their innate heterosexuality if they were encouraged to try and were not being told that they were either born gay or were "fixed so early in childhood" (Michaelson's words) that there is virtually no hope for change.

4. CAN GAY MALE LONG-TERM COUPLES STAY MONOGAMOUS?

Michaelson tells us ". . . "coming out". . . enables gay persons to be as healthy and loving as everyone else." But are gay male long-term couples the equivalent of heterosexual long-term couples? The results of many studies tell us that the answer is no. Monogamy is almost unknown in the gay male world. Here is one example of the research that has been done on this important subject:

Dr. Jeffrey Satinover states: "one of the most carefully researched studies of the most stable homosexual pairs ("The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop" conducted by D. Mcwhirter and A. Mattison, 1984) was researched and written by two authors who are themselves a homosexual couple - a psychiatrist and a psychologist. Its investigators found that of the 156 couples studied, only seven had maintained sexual fidelity; of the hundred couples that had been together for more than five years, none had been able to maintain sexual fidelity. The authors noted that "The expectation for outside sexual activity was the rule for male couples and the exception for heterosexuals."

Whatever the reasons that impel homosexual male couples to search for sexual activity outside of their stable relationship, we must be wary of saying that homosexual couples are "as healthy and loving" as heterosexual couples. Something must be going on in the relationships of homosexual men which render them different from the relationships between men and women.

5. WHO ARE THE MEN WHO COME TO JONAH TO TRY AND CHANGE?

JONAH is a founding member of PATH, Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality, which is an international coalition of ex-gay organizations representing many religious, scientific and secular groups dedicated to educating the public that no one is born gay and that change from gay to straight is very possible with the right help. Can everyone change? No. Should we therefore say that no one can change? No, that would be untrue. Do we tell other people with problems that they are born "that way" with no ability to change their long-held damaging habits, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, heterosexual promiscuity, obesity, etc., etc., etc.? No, of course not. Why do we tell SSA men and women they have no hope for change? Because gay activists have convinced too many people that they are unique among all people with a problem - gays alone have no ability to change.

As we see, despite the wishful thinking of many gay activists that their situation is unique, this idea is not backed up with any facts. If a gay gene, or genes, is ever found, we will have to revise our theories, but until then we need to tell the truth as we know it and offer help and hope to those SSA men and women who are unhappy being gay. If someone is happy being gay - gay gezinterheit. No one should be ostracized for being gay; no families should reject a child who is gay; no gays should feel they need to form separate synagogues; gays are us and we are them. Any of us could feel these feelings in certain situations. But, we cannot accept Michaelson's desire for us to believe that homosexuality is natural, healthy and good.

I think it's important for you to hear the words of the ex-gay men who wrote the web site www.peoplecanchange.com. These brave men have helped thousands of men go from gay to straight over the last few years risking the ire of the gay activists who screamed that their quest to find freedom from SSA was in vain. These men bucked the tide of political correctness and found peace and joy at the end of their difficult and time-consuming journey out of homosexuality. Their words tell their story far better than I can:

WHY DID WE DECIDE TO JOURNEY FROM GAY TO STRAIGHT?

Discovering same-sex attractions can cause tremendous internal conflict and struggle, especially when those feelings conflict with a person's values, beliefs and life plans, or the values and beliefs of his family and culture. We know. We've been there. But we've also learned that it needn't be like that. There are positive alternatives for men who are conflicted over homosexual feelings.

For some, it may be choosing a celibate lifestyle, built on a solid spiritual foundation and supported by a network of extended family and friends. Choosing a celibate lifestyle is not a choice for loneliness or isolation. On the contrary, many men who choose this path find great fulfillment in focusing their time and energy on close friendships, meaningful service, personal development and spiritual connection.

For others, it may in fact be choosing to live a homosexual life -- but a mature, spiritually grounded life of integrity and meaningful relationships, not a promiscuous, self-indulgent life where "anything goes." Yes, many gays have shown it is indeed possible to live a happy, dignified, fulfilling life as a homosexual man, and we respect them and their chosen path. Still, no matter how much a homosexual life may feel right and authentic for some people, we found it simply did not work for us.

For us, the choice that brought us the greatest peace and joy was to seek out the original, core source of our same-sex longings and fulfill (rather than deny) those needs and desires in non-sexual, healing ways. Our choice was to work to fully and authentically develop our heterosexual potential. The road we walked was a path of change -- a path of masculine affirmation, of rigorous authenticity, of genuine need-fulfillment and courageous surrender.

Perhaps you have heard that altering sexual attractions is impossible, and that even to attempt it can lead to shame and despair. Or perhaps, on the other hand, you've heard that change is not only possible but in fact rather easy -- simply a matter of prayer, or will power, or thought control. Both views are extreme, in our experience. We know from our own lives that lessening and even eliminating homosexual desires while developing and fostering heterosexual attractions is definitely possible.But we also know that it requires deep emotional and spiritual work and personal growth, often over a period of months and even years. Change doesn't come easily, but we ultimately found it to be immensely rewarding.

Our path is, admittedly, not for everyone. Anyone who is motivated primarily by shame to seek change is not only likely to fail at change but risks actually making the cycle of shame worse. Shame never motivates lasting change. Likewise, those who pursue change to satisfy other people -- whether family, friends, religious institutions or society at large -- are likely to find neither success nor satisfaction in trying to change when doing so is not truly their heart's desire.

But if you truly are self-motivated to change…if homosexuality just doesn't "work" for you…if it doesn't feel like who you really are, or conflicts with what you believe in and most want out of life…we invite you to explore the healing journey of change that worked for us. For through it, we found the love, peace, brotherhood, wholeness and joy that we had been seeking all our lives.

6. THE TORAH'S APPROACH TO HOMOSEXUALITY IS JONAH'S APPROACH

Remarkably, the Torah has no word for a "homosexual person" - only words for homosexual acts. JONAH agrees with this completely. We do not believe there are persons who are born homosexual, only men and women with a homosexual problem who carry within them the potential for heterosexuality. SSA men and women were not "born different" and have normal genes and hormones - as far as anyone can tell after 60 years of gay activists and their supporters trying, and failing, to find a biological basis for homosexuality.

Gay activists like Michaelson are telling the Jewish community to go against the Torah prohibition of homosexual acts. We disagree.

We agree that the entire issue of homosexuality should be brought out of the closet and into the light of day, but this should be done by using the best scientific and psychological studies that we have at our disposal, not by making decisions based on the demands of the gay community. We understand the pain and anguish suffered by SSA men and women in our midst and we must ask forgiveness for the wrongs we have done to them by demonizing their feelings. However, accepting these feelings as natural and good is equally damaging because every indication is that homosexuality is a same-sex attraction disorder based on childhood and adolescent wounds. These wounds are difficult to heal but they do not define the person who feels them anymore than any of us are defined by our feelings. We are all children of God who deserve the love and respect of our community.

Gay activism has successfully confused the public by combining political advocacy with misleading scientific claims that are not backed up by the facts. Alston Chase said, "When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit of knowledge is reduced to the quest for power." We must be certain that we are telling the Jewish community, and the larger world community, the truth as we currently know it based on facts and not wishful thinking.

Many of our Jewish youth who feel SSA are being urged to "come out" earlier and earlier as gay men and lesbians. We feel this is a tragic mistake. Our young people, and their families, will be better served by letting everyone hear all sides of the gay debate, which is currently not happening. We encourage anyone dealing with this problem personally, or in their family, or in their community, to do the reading and research for themselves. We are confidant that with the correct help ( see JONAH's Psycho-Educational Model for Healing Homosexuality by Berk and Goldberg in the Library of www.jonahweb.org ) many SSA men and women can grow out of SSA into their God-given gender identity. Everyone dealing with SSA should know there is a choice whether to embrace a gay identity or to journey out of homosexuality.

Elaine Silodor Berk is Co-Director of JONAH, along with Arthur Goldberg. For more information about JONAH, call their Message Center at 201-433-3444 or go to www.jonahweb.org.